The Autobiography of Mrs. Tom Thumb

By Melanie Benjamin

Despite the title, this book is a novel. Based on the life of an actual person (who actually started writing her own biography), but fiction. It's easy to forget this while reading the book. It's very immersive and based on a lot of research, so when you read it, you want to believe every single word of it, though for some, as the author admits, there's no actual evidence. It is the fascinating life story of Mercy Lavinia Warren Bump Stratton, made famous as Miss Lavinia Warren, and then as Mrs. General Tom Thumb. She was 'a perfect lady in miniature', a proportionate dwarf, but her dreams, and the life her dreams led her to, were very big. But through her story, you get to see what America (and also, a little bit, the world) was like during her life, in the mid- and late 19th century. Also you learn about the people closest to her, like her sister Minnie Warren, and P.T. Barnum. [440 pp.]

Link to book.