Comedy //

New Jonathan Swift Correspondence Reveals Houyhnhnm Name to be an Error

Gulliver’s Travels, the classic satire from 1726, covers the titular character’s adventures through lands full of strangely named peoples – the tiny Lilliputians, giant Brobdignagians, and the intelligent race of horses, the Houyhnhnms. But in a letter newly unearthed from the papers of publisher Benjamin Motte, an irate Swift complains of a typographical error –…