The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen

First published in 1785, these tall tales are told by a boastful old German nobleman who insists, with a perfectly straight face, that every impossible thing happened exactly as he describes it. He rides a cannonball across enemy lines, hauls himself and his horse out of a swamp by his own hair, sails to the Moon, and survives being swallowed whole by a great fish. Raspe based his Baron on a real soldier famous for spinning yarns, then stretched them far past any hope of belief. Short, absurd, and endlessly imitated, the stories remain a small classic of comic exaggeration. Free PDF and EPUB editions are available here.