A Russian book publisher claims the original version of Gulliver's Travels was a pornographic novel. Neonilla Samukhina says it featuries Gulliver in steamy encounters with 6ins tall Lilliputians or working as a sex toy for 60ft giants. Ms Samukhina, from St Petersburg, is to market the 'original version' after buying the manuscript. The Erotic Adventures of Lemuel Gulliver is to go on sale in Moscow book stores this weekend. Ms Samukhina refused to name the seller, but said the family had bought the manuscript from the Ford family, who were descendants of a close friend of author Jonathan Swift. "They had tried in the past to get it published but had never been believed that it was genuine, and I was sceptical, but historians have authenticated the age of the material and even style of writing," she said. A foreword to the book includes a complaint allegedly written by Swift himself about the removal of the erotic passages, which were supposedly a fundamental part of his original novel. The book has Gulliver describing how Lilliput women give him and themselves sexual pleasure - and how his semen was discovered to have healing properties on Lilliput. Hermann Real, director of the Ehrenpreis Center for Swift Studies based in Germany and one of the world's leading experts on the writer, dismissed the new work as "an elaborate hoax, mainly devised to promote sales". And Joseph McMinn, professor of Anglo-Irish literature at the University of Ulster, added: "Every few years somebody comes up with news about unknown manuscripts of famous writers found but very often those things are not real." Home - News - Entertainment - Sport - Business - Video Reports - Going Out - TV Guide Copyright © 2005 Ananova Ltd Terms and conditions of use - Privacy policy - Corrections - Contact Ananova - About Ananova
