Background
Within the essay, Orwell refers to receiving a copy of Gulliver's Travels on his eighth birthday and claims to have read it not less than half a dozen times since. He refers to it as "a rancorous as well as a pessimistic book", going on to add that "it descends into political partisanship of a narrow kind." Orwell admits that while it might seem that his object in writing the essay was to "refute" Swift and "belittle" him, adding that he is against Swift in a political and moral sense, he nevertheless states that Swift is "one of the writers I admire with least reserve".
Read more about this topic: Politics Vs. Literature: An Examination Of Gulliver's Travels
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