Li es of great men all remind us,
We can make our li es sublime.

In 1785 there appeared in London a little book of 48 pages, entitled "Baron Munchausen's Narrative of His Marvellous Travels and Campaigns in Russia." It was written by Professor Rudolf Erich Raspe, a German official of the Dolcoath mines in Cornwall, and is a collection of stories supposed to have been told by Hieronymus Karl Friedrich, Baron von Munchausen (1720-1797), a German nobleman who had served in the Russian campaign against the Turks, and who afterwards amused his friends with marvelous tales of his adventures. The book was enlarged by Gottfried August Burger in a German edition in 1787. It is a satire on James Bruce's "Travels to Discover the Sources of the Nile" (1790) and Baron de Tott's "Mémoires sur les Turcs et Tartares" (1784).

Half-Dime Library
9 Adventures of Baron Münchausen, 1877