The History of the Lives and Actions of the Most Famous Highwaymen, Street-Robbers, & &, to which is added the Voyages and Plunders of the Most Noted Pirates

viii, 9-539, [1]pp, with engraved frontispiece.  Bound in contemporary full brown calf’s  leather, five raised bands on spine which is highly decorated, red leather spine label with titles in gilt (sensitively repaired retaining original boards and backstrip).  8vo.  Boards are worn around edges, rubbed and a little rounded on corners. less so on spine ends, some shelf wear and minor scratches.  Pages a little aged with some faint and occasional spotting.  Bookplate of John Jay Paul, with the pencilled date of 1908, on front paste down.  Clipping recording the offering for sale a 1734 edition of an earlier edition.  Bookseller’s description of volume in hand loosely laid in.  

Originally published in 1734, this volume includes accounts of the adventures of Blackbeard the pirate, the life of Captain Kyd, the life of Sir Henry Morgan – the pirate who took Panama by storm – female pirates Mary Read and Anne Bonny, Calico Jack Rackham, Robin Hood,and many other pirates, highwaymen, cut-throats and outlaws.  A curious and entertaining work which has gone through many editions.  This edition includes three appendies giving accounts of other characters upheld for their actions since Johnson first published his history.

Johnson is credited with creating the modern concept of piracy with his sweeping accounts of what came to be called the Golden Age of Piracy: he gave almost mythical status to the more colourful pirates such as Edward ‘Blackbeard’ Teach.  But so little is known of Johnson himself that some of speculated that it is a pseudonym, and that perhaps Daniel Defoe was the true author.