Gulliver's Travels

Gulliver's Travels was a book by Jonathan Swift published around a hundred years after 1616. (PROSE: The Empire of Glass) Its protagonist, Lemuel Gulliver, was brought to life in the Land of Fiction, and there encountered the Second Doctor. He could only speak passages from the novel. (TV: The Mind Robber) As the First Doctor noted, Laputa was a fictional island within the book's narrative. (PROSE: The Empire of Glass)

The Second Doctor had a copy, and gave it to Eleanor Woods to read. According to her, the book began with Gulliver setting sail from Bristol. (PROSE: Visiting Hours) The Fifth Doctor made a "literary reference" to the book, joking that the Scientifica had no more cucumbers to offer as they'd used them all up trying to extract sunbeams. (PROSE: Cold Fusion)

Behind the scenes
This is a reference to the following passage from the novel: "He has been eight years upon a project for extracting sunbeams out of cucumbers."