The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen | Page 4

have
obtained such a world-wide fame, that the story of their origin
possesses a general and historic interest apart from whatever of
obscurity or of curiosity it may have to recommend it.
The work first appeared in London in the course of the year 1785. No
copy of the first edition appears to be accessible; it seems, however, to
have been issued some time in the autumn, and in the /Critical Review/
for December 1785 there is the following notice: "Baron Munchausen's
Narrative of his Marvellous Travels and Campaigns in Russia. Small
8vo, IS. (Smith). This is a satirical production calculated to throw
ridicule on the bold assertions of some parliamentary declaimers. If rant
may be best foiled at its own weapons, the author's design is not
ill-founded; for the marvellous has never been carried to a more
whimsical and ludicrous extent." The reviewer had probably read the
work through from one paper cover to the other. It was in fact too short
to bore the most blasé of his kind, consisting of but forty-nine small
octavo pages. The second edition, which is in the British Museum,
bears the following title; "Baron Munchausen's Narrative of his
Marvellous Travels and Campaigns in Russia; humbly dedicated and
recommended to country gentlemen, and if they please to be repeated
as their own after a hunt, at horse races, in watering places, and other
such polite assemblies; round the bottle and fireside. Smith. Printed at
Oxford. 1786." The fact that this little pamphlet again consists of but
forty-nine small octavo pages, combined with the similarity of title (as
far as that of the first edition is given in the /Critical Review/),
publisher, and price, affords a strong presumption that it was identical
with the first edition. This edition contains only chapters ii., iii., iv., v.,
and vi. (pp. 10-44) of the present reprint. These chapters are the best in

the book and their substantial if peculiar merit can hardly be denied,
but the pamphlet appears to have met with little success, and early in
1786 Smith seems to have sold the property to another bookseller,
Kearsley. Kearsley had it enlarged, but not, we are expressly informed,
in the preface to the seventh edition, by the hand of the original author
(who happened to be in Cornwall at the time). He also had it illustrated
and brought it out in the same year in book form at the enhanced price
of two shillings, under the title: "Gulliver Reviv'd: The Singular
Travels, Campaigns, Voyages and Sporting Adventures of Baron
Munnikhouson commonly pronounced Munchausen; as he relates them
over a bottle when surrounded by his friends. A new edition
considerably enlarged with views from the Baron's drawings. London.
1786." A well-informed /Critical Reviewer/ would have amended the
title thus: "Lucian reviv'd: or Gulliver Beat with his own Bow."
Four editions now succeeded each other with rapidity and without
modification. A German translation appeared in 1786 with the imprint
London: it was, however, in reality printed by Dieterich at Göttingen. It
was a free rendering of the fifth edition, the preface being a clumsy
combination of that prefixed to the original edition with that which
Kearsley had added to the third.
The fifth edition (which is, with the exception of trifling differences on
the title-page, identical with the third, fourth, and sixth) is also that
which has been followed in the present reprint down to the conclusion
of chapter twenty, where it ends with the words "the great quadrangle."
The supplement treating of Munchausen's extraordinary flight on the
back of an eagle over France to Gibraltar, South and North America,
the Polar Regions, and back to England is derived from the seventh
edition of 1793, which has a new sub-title:-- "Gulliver reviv'd, or the
Vice of Lying properly exposed." The preface to this enlarged edition
also informs the reader that the last four editions had met with
extraordinary success, and that the supplementary chapters, all, that is,
with the exception of chapters ii., iii., iv., v., and vi., which are ascribed
to Baron Munchausen himself, were the production of another pen,
written, however, in the Baron's manner. To the same ingenious person
the public was indebted for the engravings with which the book was
embellished. The seventh was the last edition by which the classic text
of Munchausen was seriously modified. Even before this important

consummation had been arrived at, a sequel, which was within a
fraction as long as the original work (it occupies pp. 163-299 of this
volume), had appeared under the title, "A Sequel to the Adventures of
Baron Munchausen. . . . Humbly dedicated to Mr. Bruce the Abyssinian
traveller, as the Baron conceives that it may be some service to him,
previous to his making another journey into Abyssinia. But if this
advice does not