Captain Charles Johnson's colourful accounts of the most roguish and infamous highwaymen in history comes to life in this new publication featuring the original 1734 engravings alongside additional complementary material from the Library's collections.

Captain Charles Johnson's celebrated A General History of the Pirates (1724) is the most famous book about pirates ever written. The mysterious Johnson followed up with the equally engrossing The Lives and Adventures of the Most Famous Highwaymen (1734) which, published here for the first time in two centuries, provides over 50 accounts of the most notorious British criminals of the 17th and 18th centuries. Johnson's volumes are significant as the forerunners of the real life criminal biography genre, and for their influence on such early novels as Defoe's Moll Flanders and Fielding's Jonathan Wild. Originally published in folio size complete with fine engravings, this new edition not only includes the very best of these original decorative features but also presents a series of related illustrations, playbills and portraits from the British Library collections.