Gulliver's Travels, originally 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 1726 prose satire by the Anglo-Irish writer and clergyman Jonathan Swift, satirising both human nature and the "travellers' tales" literary subgenre. It is Swift's best-known full-length work and a classic of English literature. The English dramatist John Gay remarked, "It is universally read, from the cabinet council to the nursery." The book has been adapted into films, movies and theatrical performances over the centuries. The book was an immediate success, and Swift claimed that he wrote Gulliver's Travels "to vex the world rather than divert it".