Gambling Memorabilia Featuring the Collection of Tom Blue

Tufts, Henry. A Narrative of the Life, Adventures, Travels and Sufferings of Henry Tufts, Now Residing at Lemington, in the District of Maine. Dover: Samuel Bragg, 1807. First edition. Contemporary full calf, rubbed. Small woodcut tail-pieces. 12mo. 366pp. Browned and foxed with scattered closed and mended tears. In a cloth folding case, leather spine label. An early and important American criminal memoir on the thief, con man, and all-around New England scoundrel. The Tufts family was rumored to have destroyed many copies, and a fire at the printer’s claimed others (Streeter sale, 1967). A second edition would not be seen until 1930. The text contains likely the first American glossary of the flash language of “rogues and sharpers” (Burke, NYPL, 1939), accounts of thievery, false impersonation, Tufts’ life among the Abenaki Indians in Maine, and several of his prison escapes.