BARRINGTON, George A New Edition. Memoirs of George Barrington... London, M. Smith, 1790
Octavo, with engraved frontispiece (Barrington picking Prince Orlow's pocket at the Opera); a fine copy, uncut in modern quarter calf.
Scarce: one of a number of chapbook-type publications of the early 1790s, all of which are rare, on the "Prince of Pickpockets" before his transportation to Botany Bay. This is one of three versions of the Memoirs published by M. Smith (one of them was in a much shorter form). Similar books by other publishers were described as the "Only Authentic Edition", or "The Genuine Life and Trial". All of them seem to have been quickly published catch-penny publications, the quantity of them pointing to the considerable public interest in the pickpocket.
This rash of publication in the 1790s does not mean that the books are common today: in fact this version was known to Ferguson only from the Mitchell Library copy, and no additional copies were discovered for the Addenda volume.
Ferguson, 67a.
$A3600
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