Gulliver's Travels Resources

We cannot say enough good things about this awesome page introducing the text of Gulliver's Travels. It's got a dictionary of Gulliver's made-up words (with possible derivations), a series of links to critical materials, and the full text of the novel itself. Our one caution is that some of the links are no longer working.

This is a helpful biography of Swift, dealing chronologically with his political, literary, and love careers.

The original Gulliver's Travels had a few maps and illustrations, but nothing like this ornate and beautiful late nineteenth century artist's edition of the work. Arthur Rackham also painted illustrations for Mother Goose and other fairy stories.

Obviously, Gulliver's adventures are pretty appealing to kids once you ease up a bit on the language and the dirty jokes. If you're interested in some old-school illustrations and maps, Project Gutenberg has one of these abridged editions of Gulliver's Travels uploaded on its site.

An animated film by Ray Harryhausen, the genius behind the 1981 version of Clash of the Titans and the 1963 Jason and the Argonauts. But we have to admit, much as we love Ray Harryhausen, this looks pretty hokey and dated.

1965 Japanese animated science fiction based on Jonathan Swift. We're just happy to know that Gulliver gets to continue his travels in space – maybe he'll find a new non-Yahoo species with which to live out the rest of his days.

Obviously, this one is still coming down the pike, but it looks like it could be awesome: Jack Black (of Tropic Thunder and School of Rock) is going to play Gulliver, a travel writer marooned on Lilliput with a bunch of tiny people. It's also going to have Jason Segel (who's on How I Met Your Mother; I Love You, Man; Knocked Up – we love this guy) and Emily Blunt. Exciting stuff!

An old animated film.

Full-length feature!

An odd mix of live action and animated film – this excerpt starts with the Lilliputians finding Gulliver on the shore of their island. Note that Gulliver is played by the same guy who played Dumbledore in the first Harry Potter flick, Richard Harris.

Portrait of Jonathan Swift as a (relatively) young man.

Portrait of Jonathan Swift as an older (and plumper) man.