Author:Jonathan Swift

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We list here the 3 editions of "Gulliver's Travels" from 1726 as 3 printings of the first edition. Harold H. Williams writes, in his 1926 book The Motte Editions of Gulliver's Travels, p. lxxiv</a>:

"For nearly two hundred years, the three separate appearances of Gulliver's Travels from 1726 (Teerink A, AA, and B) were considered different issues of a single first edition. Early in the twentieth century bibliographical analysis demonstrated that these were, in fact, separate editions, each set from the previous, but Teerink still thought it "advisable to stick to the well established practice of calling the three 1726 editions first," largely because the publisher (Benjamin Motte), as well as Swift (in letters to Pope and Ford), thought of them in that way, describing only the edition following Teerink B (the 1727 octavo edition) as "The Second Edition" (vol. 1 title page) and "The Second Edition, Corrected" (vol. 2 title page) and the 1727 duodecimo as the Third (all five published by Motte), "after which Bathurst's 1742, 1747 and 1751 editions as 'fourth,' 'fifth' and 'sixth' follow in regular sequence." The several editions of 1726 all consist of two volumes of two parts each describing voyages to: I. Lilliput; II. Brobdingnag; III. Laputa, Balnibarbi, Luggnagg, Glubdubdrib, and Japan, and IV. the Country of the Houyhnhnms."