A General History of The Pirates

London: Philip Sainsbury at The Cayme Press, 1925-1927. Third Edition. Two Volumes. Quarto. 30 cm. Publisher's deep blue cloth, titled and decorated in gilt to spines and front boards. Dustjacket. [viii]; 130pp.; [viii]; 207pp. + 4pp pamphlet of original plates from the first edition laid in to Vol. II. Limited to 500 copies. Very light wear and scuffing to the cloth, perhaps a little dulling of the gilt; internally clean with some pale foxing in places, yellow topstain, edges untrimmed in classic small press style, some cosmetic browning to the edges of the rather decadent hand-made paper. In clean, strong examples of the scarce dustjackets, with a little (truncated) marginal wear to both volumes, and some discoloration and soiling to the jacket of Vol I. A very good set indeed of a work that is seldom seen in dustjacket.

Arguably the fifth edition, albeit 300 years late, of 'Captain Johnson's' mammoth and influential "A General History of the Robberies and Murders of The Most Notorious Pyrates" originally published in 1724 to the great enjoyment of the reading public, and almost immediately becoming a foundation stone of the mythology of piracy that endures to the present day. It contained 'biographies' of many of the greatest and most notorious freebooters and buccaneers, including Charles Avery, Calico Jack Rackham, Charles Vane, Mary Read, Anne Bonny, and Blackbeard himself, along with a seaborne legion of other lesser known characters who have recently risen to popular prominence, like Stede Bonnet. It also firmly entrenched in the mind of a sensationalist public tropes like wooden legs, eyepatches, parrots, and the first use of the term "Jolly Roger" to describe one of a variety of pirate flags. Clearly written under a pseudonym, and long attributed to Daniel Defoe moonlighting for the easy money, modern scholarship leans away from Defoe and in the direction of someone like Nathaniel Mist (almost a pirate name in itself) a disreputable but entrepreneurial London publisher, or possibly someone in his stable of writers for hire. Regardless of source or veracity, and notwithstanding the inclusion of at least three or four pirates who almost certainly never existed to pad out the reading time, it is work of undeniable influence on piratical fiction, with almost every pirate writer from Stevenson (it's the source for the name of Israel Hands among others) and J.M. Barrie, to Howard Pyle and Tim Powers, borrowing and pillaging from Johnson's cargo of names and details. Scarce in this lush private press edition, and even scarcer in dustjacket. (Inventory #: 84873)