During the 18th century, British audiences were eager to hear about cultures and people in the lands where explorers were claiming colonies for England. As such, diaries and first-person accounts by explorers such as Captain James Cook and William Dampier were immensely popular. Though advertised as truthful, many of these accounts contained embellishments and falsehoods. Gulliver's Travels is a parody of this "traveller's tales" literary sub-genre, and it satirizes the dishonesty of these accounts as well as the gullibility of English readers. What's more, the novel contains numerous allusions to contemporary works in this genre.
In Preface 1: "The Publisher to the Reader," Richard Sympson introduces Gulliver's Travels as a truthful account by his friend Lemuel Gulliver. This prefatory letter is one of several tactics used by Jonathan Swift to add an air of legitimacy to the novel, but the name of the invented publisher may also serve as a signal to the reader that Gulliver's Travels is actually a parody. "Richard Sympson" is possibly an allusion to William Symson, the pseudonymous author of A New Voyage to the East Indies, a work of travel literature published in 1715. Both Symson and his voyages were entirely fictional, but the main narrative was fairly convincing, since it heavily plagiarized A Voyage to Surat in the Year 1689, a legitimate travel account by John Ovington. This allusion indicates that Gulliver's Travels, like A New Voyage, is also a fictitious imitation.
Preface 2: "A Letter from Captain Gulliver to his Cousin Sympson" contains another allusion to a contemporary work of travel literature:
[...] as my Cousin Dampier did by my Advice, in his Book called, A Voyage Round the World.
In this letter, Gulliver claims to be related to English pirate, explorer, and naturalist William Dampier, who published the autobiographical A New Voyage round the World in 1697. This sensational account served as the inspiration for the fictional Robinson Crusoe, published in 1719 by Daniel Defoe. Gulliver also claims to have given Dampier advice concerning this book, further adding to his air of legitimacy and implying that his account will be equally dramatic.
