ADVENTURES OF BARON MUNCH AUSEN, The. Munchausen's Adventures are a by-word among travelers' tales for extravagant, methodical lying. They owe their name and first inspiration to Hieronymus Karl Friedrich, Baron Mfinchhausen (1720-97), of Bodenwerder, near Hanover, Germany, who had served in the Russian cavalry against the Turks (1737-39) and had had an adventurous middle life. He had been living on his German estate since 1760 and was renowned locally as a raconteur. Among his auditors was a Ger man scholar and writer, Rudolph Erich Raspe, who, being in straits in London in 1785, pub lished anonymously some of these stories in a little book of 49 pages,
The English edition of 1793, with a sub-title, ((or the Vice of Lying Properly Exposed," had further additions and such continued to be made by publishers' hacks for many years. The Baron, innocent source of all this, was far from relishing the reputation he had gained for unveracity by such pranks of a lively fancy as cold so bitter as to freeze music into a posthorn or thaws that would leave the rider after a night's rest to find his horse hanging by the bridle from a steeple. Adolph Ellisen, in a German edition of 1849, says his father found the Baron exceedingly uncommunicative when he visited him in 1795. The most satisfactory modern English edition of the 'Adventures' is by Lawrence and Bullen, with an introduction by T. Seccombe. There are many others, some illustrated by talented ar tists. For the place of the 'Adventures) in the history of literary lying consult Wiideut schen Lfigendichtungen bis auf Miinchhausen) by Karl Miiller-Fraureuth (1881) and Lienhard, F.,
Lustspiel) (Leipzig 1900).