(Gulliver’s Travels) Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World ... By Lemuel Gulliver.

Jonathan Swift - Gulliver's Travels - 2 volumes, octavo (190 x 115mm). Third issue - Teerink B. Engraved frontispiece portrait of the author in the second state, 6 engraved plates (occasional extremely faint and insignificant spotting and browning). Contemporary speckled calf (extremities fractionally rubbed with a little wear to head of spine of vol. II, upper joints to both vols just starting to crack, otherwise a very good copy). In bespoke solander box. Teerink 291. Provenance: Robert Bristow (either 1688-1737, MP for Winchelsea, 1708-1737, or his son, also Robert, 1712-1776, also MP for Winchelsea 1738-1741; 18th-century engraved armorial bookplates) – Frank Graham (of Newcastle on Tyne; 20th-century bookplate).

Gulliver is one of the most famous English books of all time, and also the greatest work of literature associated with Australia. It is a key work in the imaginary voyage tradition, particularly for its use of a series of realistic framing devices which include maps, an editorial comment that the work has been greatly reduced by the omission of most of the material relating to winds and tides, and reference to genuine sailors such as Dampier. Gulliver, comments at one point that he was "coasting New Holland", and at another that he has been "driven by a violent storm to the north-west of Van Diemen's Land", in the very year (1699) that Dampier was in fact exploring the Australian northwest. Gulliver is quite precise in his mapping of the lands he visits, "With a latitude given as 30°2' south, the imaginary Lilliput … is placed somewhere in South Australia, probably near the isles of St Francis and St Peter at the eastern end of the Great Australian Bight".