On 17 February 1727 Alexander Pope wrote to Swift as follows: ‘You receiv’d, I hope, some commendatory verses from a Horse and a Lilliputian, to Gulliver; and an heroic Epistle of Mrs. Gulliver. The Bookseller would fain have printed ‘em before the second Edition of the Book, but I would not permit it without your approbation; nor do I much like them.’ This clearly refers to the fourth, first and fifth of the poems reprinted below, which were published inMotte's ‘Second Edition’ of Gulliver's Travels in May 1727, and virtually simultaneously in The Post Boy and The St James's Evening-Post. Some copies of Motte's ‘Second Edition’ contain four poems, others five: ‘The Words of the King of Brobdingnag’ is occasionally absent, and when present is tipped in.

The authorship of the poems has been reviewed by Norman Ault in his volume of Pope's minor poems in the Twickenham edition, where he concludes that they are all by Pope, with the possible and partial exception of ‘The Lamentation of Glumdalclitch’, where John Gay may have made a contribution.

The texts reprinted here are taken from Motte's ‘Second Edition’ of Gulliver's Travels (1727), as the earliest publication and the one possessing the closest link with Gulliver's Travels.