An American Version of Munchausen

Abstract

T HE FIRST ENGLISH version of Baron Munchausen's marvelous adventures was published in 1786, and almost immediately became a world success. Of the numerous adaptations and imitations none is more interesting than that of an American author, published for the first time in I805. Although this book went through at least four different editions, it is today completely forgotten. The American version of the celebrated work is obviously based upon one of the later Kearsley editions, of which the seventh, now usually considered the final one, was published at London, in 1793,' and upon the Sequel to the Adventures of Baron Munchausen (London, I792). The five engravings after Rowlandson which adorn the first two printings of the American version, however, were taken from the Tegg edition.2 While the writers of the English and German editions had introduced some satirical allusions in the later chapters, the American author uses the Munchausen stories consciously as a vehicle for political and social satire. Quite a few of his own additions remind us of the harmless tall stories of the original versions; but many others are vitriolic and libelous attacks upon Jeff erson and Democracy, upon quackery and humbug, upon personal and political enemies of the author. We need pay no heed to the author's claim to being an Englishman. He was doubtless one of the satirical writers in the Federalist camp, and, as will be shown later, in all probability Thomas Green Fessenden.3