Book wide text

The Surprising adventures of Tom Thumb: embellished with beautiful coloured plates. (Glasgow, 1814- 1820). Briggs Collection Pamphlet PZ6.1.S8 barcode 6001930743

This clearly well-read little pamphlet contains two Tom Thumb stories for the price of one, both of which have had the cruder details of the earlier versions removed. In the first, longer, prose story, Tom Thumb is born to a childless couple as a reward for their kindness to Merlin. Clothed in mouse-fur boots and acorn caps, he is eaten by various creatures, incorporated into various foodstuffs (including ‘furmenty’, a medieval dish accompanying meat made from boiling hulled wheat with milk and eggs, sweetened with ingredients such as sugar, almonds, cinnamon and currants), becomes King Arthur’s court dwarf, and narrowly escapes execution only to be killed by a spider bite. The second is a shorter poem recounting more or less the same story, but omitting his life at court.