EARLIEST COLLECTION OF CRIME STORIES: SMITH’S COMPLEAT HISTORY, THE EXPANDED EDITION OF 1719

SMITH, Alexander. A Compleat History of the Lives and Robberies of the Most Notorious Highway-Men, Foot-Pads, Shop-Lifts and Cheats, of Both Sexes, in and about London and Westminster, and all Parts of Great Britain, for above an Hundred Years Past, Continu’d to the Present Time. London: Sam. Briscoe, 1719. Two volumes. Tall, thick 12mo, contemporary full brown sheep rebacked, raised bands, red and green morocco spine labels, front cover monogrammed “EP,” new endpapers.

Fifth edition “with the addition of near two hundred robberies lately committed,” of Captain Smith’s account of crimes and criminals in London, in which “their most secret and barbarous murders, unparalleled robberies, notorious thefts, and unheard of cheats are set in a true light, and expos’d to publick view, for the common benefit of mankind.”

Early in the 18th century, collections of short stories of highwaymen and other notorious criminals became extraordinarily popular. Individual accounts first appeared as broadsides and chapbooks, cheaply priced and sold by itinerant pedlars, at fairs and especially at public executions. The earliest compilation of these stories is Smith’s Compleat History, first published in 1714. According to the preface, the lives of criminals should be made public, in order to prevent crime. Children were encouraged to read these stories, because they were believed to inculcate the principles of right living— by fear of punishment, if not by the dull and earnest morals appended to the biographies. Later collections appeared under the generic name, The Newgate Calendar, and it, along with the Bible, Foxe’s Book of Martyrs and Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, could be found in most English homes between 1750 and 1850. Most 19th-century authors would have read the Calendar as children, and whatever the moral effects, it certainly provided them with plenty of provocative material. Dickens’ Barnaby Rudge, Lytton’s Eugene Aram, and Fielding’s Jonathan Wild are only a few of the many novels whose plots can be traced to actual crimes. This 1719 edition of Alexander Smith’s pioneering Compleat History of the Lives and Robberies of the Most Notorious Highway-Men includes “The Thieves New Canting-Dictionary, Explaining the most mysterious Words… used at the present Time by our Modern Thieves,” with its own separate title page. Both volumes contain the same frontispiece, “Andrew Baynes a Foot Pad,” engraved by van Gucht. A third volume of Smith appeared in 1720 with the subtitle “Printed from the original M.S. out of the Bodleian library in Oxford. Together with the continuation of the wicked lives of highway-men, murderers, foot-pads, house-breakers, shoplifts, water-pads, kid-lays, hook-pole-lays, molly-lays, bumming-lays, and the surprizing adventures of several famous pirates, down to the present time.” Smith is also responsible for The Comical and Tragical History of the most noted Baylifis in and about London and Westminster (1723). Armorial bookplate of Richard Pryce.

Text lightly embrowned, scattered foxing throughout, rubbing to board edges of contemporary sheep. An extremely good copy.