Tom Thumb, the New Oedipus.

For many of us, the mention of Tom Thumb immediately conjures up the image of the jaunty little boy no bigger than a thumb that we remember from our childhood storybooks. But it is less likely that we recall his story, and, if we do, it is probably a variation based the Brothers Grimm iteration of the tale, which became increasingly ubiquitous throughout the twentieth century as it was featured in the Little Golden Books and taken up by Disney. The Grimms transcribed the tale sometime around 1810, but the story is much older than that, and the older the version we look at the more interesting it becomes; Tom Thumb was greatly transformed as it traversed the gap between the 1600s and 1810, and between London and Germany. Let me first offer a condensed synopsis of the earliest complete version of the story I could find, from seventeenth-century London; it is probably a story that you do not know, and one I'm sure will make you merry, just as Tom's chronicler claimed in 1621. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]