Gulliver's Travels

Swift's satire sends its narrator to invented islands, but it frames every voyage in a real, ordinary England: a ship's surgeon from Nottinghamshire who trains and settles around the London docks and sails from English ports before the fantastical lands begin.

Lemuel Gulliver

Nottinghamshire (Newark), where he was born

Part 1, ch. 1

Gulliver opens his account by placing himself: a third son of a small Nottinghamshire family, sent off to Cambridge and then to a London surgeon. The plainness of this origin is the joke's foundation, a dull English gentleman reporting the impossible in the same flat voice. Newark stands here for the unnamed county town.

Part 1, ch. 1

inferred Gulliver states he was born in Nottinghamshire, a real English county, though no town is named. The pin marks Newark-on-Trent, the county's principal market town, as a representative point. Marked outsideSetting: Nottinghamshire lies well north of the London frame.

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Lemuel Gulliver

Old Jewry, the surgeon Bates

Part 1, ch. 1

Before any voyage, Gulliver learns his trade under the surgeon Bates and sets up a small London practice near the Old Jewry, in the heart of the City. It is the respectable, unremarkable career the sea keeps interrupting. The street is real, one of the old lanes off Cheapside.

Part 1, ch. 1

inferred Gulliver is apprenticed to Mr James Bates, a London surgeon, and later takes a house near the Old Jewry, a real street in the City of London. The pin marks Old Jewry; the exact premises are not given.

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Lemuel Gulliver

Wapping and the docks

Part 1, ch. 1

When his City practice fails, Gulliver goes down to the river among ships' crews and settles a while at Wapping, hoping to fall in with captains who need a surgeon. It is the world of masts and lodging-houses that feeds him onto the voyages. Wapping was then the working waterfront of maritime London.

Part 1, ch. 1

inferred Gulliver, short of patients, moves among the seafaring quarter and takes lodgings and work near Wapping, the sailors' district by the river; the text names Wapping. The pin marks it as a representative point in the old riverside docks.

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