Page 127 - Gullivers

the title pages. Three Dublin editions were published immediately, the first
in late 1726, containing some of Swift’s corrections to the first London edition, printed by and for John Hyde, printer and bookseller in Dame Street. The next issue was printed for George Risk, George Ewing and William Smith, booksellers
in Dame Street; it was advertised in December 1726, but its imprint gives the date 1727. The third is a reprint of the second edition, printed for George Risk, George Ewing and William Smith, and dated 1727. The printer is S.P., who may be Sylvanus Pepyat, bookseller and stationer to the city, or more likely Deborah Powell, printer, widow of Stephen Powell, printing in the name of her under-age son, Samuel. Irish editions are now very scarce and hard to acquire. Trinity College Dublin holds a copy of the second Dublin edition, the National Library of Ireland holds two copies of the Dublin edition of 1727, and
a portion of that same edition, containing parts I and II only, was collected by the bibliographer E.R. McClintock Dix and donated to Dublin City Libraries. Swift made several corrections to Gulliver’s Travels before its publication by Faulkner
in 1735.Writing to Faulkner he observed:
‘Since you intend to print a new edition of that book, I must tell you that the English printer made several alterations which I much disapprove of ’. The edition published by Faulkner as volume three of The Works in 1735 is considered the most correct, and in the publisher’s words ‘it may be truly said, a genuine and correct edition of this author’s works was never publish’d till this time’.
Swift’s friends and correspondents John Gay and Alexander Pope wrote to him soon after publication of Gulliver’s Travels (16 and 17 November 1726), congratulating him on his wonderful
book. Gay wrote: ‘From the highest to
the lowest it is universally read, from the cabinet-council to the nursery’. Therefore, child readers were engaged with the
story from the start. Abridged versions made their appearance, appealing to children and to those with poor literacy skills, and costing less than the original two-volume version. In the intervening period of nearly 300 years the story has been abridged and retold countless times, editors concentrating on the fantasy
and comic elements and omitting much
of the political satire and some of the scenes considered offensive, or unsuitable
J.G. Thomson Ballad singers
VI. Dublin City Public Libraries’ Swist Collection
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