Help! I have an old edition of Gulliver’s Travels I found at a thrift store. I cannot find the same edition online anywhere. At least not with the same cover. Is it rare? Can anyone tell me anything about it?

By CleverHeron5

The first edition came out in 1726, and this one feels more like it’s from the early 1900s. To me, a rare book is mostly desirable because you’re basically holding it as it first showed up for regular readers. Like, it mattered early on and helped the whole thing spread until it became the well-known book it is. If you’ve got a copy from around 200 years later, I don’t really see how that fits into the actual history of the writing—scarce or not, it probably won’t be that sought-after. Sure, there are exceptions when the book is valuable as an art piece (fancy binding, original lithographs, that kind of thing), or if a later printing was a big deal in getting the book back out to more people—like the Rockwell Kent Moby-Dick edition that helped it get rediscovered in the 20th century. But I don’t think this one really falls into either of those situations.