Gulliver's Travels, whose full title is Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World. In Four Parts. By Lemuel Gulliver, First a Surgeon and then a Captain of Several Ships is a prose satire by Irish writer and clergyman Jonathan Swift, that is both a satire on human nature and the "travellers' tales" literary subgenre. It is Swift's best known full-length work and a classic of English literature The book became popular as soon as it was published. John Gay wrote in a 1726 letter to Swift that "It is universally read, from the cabinet council to the nursery." If you haven't read Swift's original, but have only happened on it through the infinite number of adaptations of this work, you need to read it now; it's a classic that may not be at all what you've come to think.