[DESFONTAINES, Pierre François Guyot]

Le Nouveau Gulliver...

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Clouzier & F. Le Breton, Paris, 1730. Two volumes, faint waterstains to the second volume, but a very good copy in contemporary mottled calf, spine gilt in compartments, double red labels. First edition of this sequel by the French translator of Swift.

The stunning success of Desfontaines' heavily bowdlerised 1727 translation of Swift's famous novel no doubt provided the impetus to this unofficial sequel. The fiction that it was translated from an original English text is exposed in the preface, where its relationship to Gulliver's Travels is said to be akin to that of Fénélon's Aventures de Telemaque with the Odyssey.

As Gove comments, this is one of the very few works to use Gulliver as a model for imitation (unlike the endless array of Robinsonades, for instance) and thus occupies an important position in the history of Swift's novel. Like his father, Jean travels to four lands. He is at his most spirited describing the Island of Babilary in which women are superior, but the other lands have some of the inventiveness, if not the venom, of Swift: the hunch-backed Crump-backs who regard their own form as the ideal, or the Letalispons, who 'live to be 120 yet always look attractive because they begin a second innings at 60' (Dunmore).

The work quickly went through many editions, including translation into English as early as 1731.
Negley, 175; Presley, 4 XII, p. 3; Teerink, 1238.

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• 订书号：: 005_393

• 书商: Hordern House (AUSTRALIA)