Jonathan Swift responded with an attack on the Irish judiciary almost unparalleled in its ferocity, his principal target being the "vile and profligate villain" William Whitshed, Lord Chief Justice of Ireland. Also during these years, he began writing his masterpiece, "Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World, in Four Parts, by Lemuel Gulliver, first a surgeon, and then a captain of several ships", better known as "Gulliver's Travels". Much of the material reflects his political experiences of the preceding decade. For instance, the episode in which the giant Gulliver puts out the Lilliputian palace fire by urinating on it can be
The Sign of the Four dollars. Over the following few months in the same year, the novel was then republished in several regional British journals. These re-serialisations gave the title as "The Sign of Four". The novel was published in book form in October 1890 by Spencer Blackett, again using the title "The Sign of Four". This edition was illustrated by Charles H. M. Kerr. The title of both the British and American editions of this first book edition omitted the second "the" of the original title. Different editions over the years have varied between the two forms of the title, with most editions favouring