Buoyed by the success of his bestselling A General History of the Pirates (1724), Captain Charles Johnson expanded his work to include 80 accounts of extraordinary British criminals from the 17th and 18th centuries in A General History of the Lives and Adventures of the Most Famous Pirates, Highwaymen, Murderers, Street-Robbers, &c. (1734). He added pirate biographies and expanded the cast to include ruthless highwaymen, murderers, and other criminals.

Johnson’s volumes, fictional accounts based on facts, are significant as the forerunners of the real-life criminal biography genre, influencing early novels like Defoe’s Moll Flanders and Fielding’s Jonathan Wild. They resonate to this day, inspiring the fiction of Ben Aaronovitch and Jake Arnott.

Originally published in folio size with fine engravings, this new collection of rogues includes the best original decorative plates, related illustrations, playbills, and portraits from the British Library collections.