Swift's most ambitious, most accessible, and most enduring literary work - Gulliver's Travels - first appeared on October 28, 1726, just over a month before his fifty-ninth birthday. Its actual title was Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World, and it appeared anonymously, or rather pseudonymously, as by “Lemuel Gulliver, first a Surgeon, and then a Captain of several Ships.” Swift had gone to elaborate lengths to disguise his authorship and create a sense of mystery about the book's origins, but “Gulliver” quickly became the talk of the town and Swift's authorship soon was an open secret. The first printing sold out in a matter of days, and within five weeks two more printings were issued. We do not know the size of the print runs, but it is a safe guess that more than 20,000 copies of Gulliver's Travels were circulating among London's half-million people by the end of December - almost seven times the number of copies of The Spectator that Addison claimed would reach 60,000 readers - and the book's fame spread quickly throughout both England and Ireland.