A ship's surgeon washes up among people six inches high, then among giants, then on a floating island of theorists, and finally among horses who find humans disgusting. Swift published it anonymously through an intermediary because parts of it were actionable, and the publisher softened passages without asking. It was read as a children's book almost at once, which was not the plan. Ninety-nine plates after Gainsborough and Wright of Derby bring the century's portraits, experiments and drawing rooms into a book about looking closely at strange societies.
