Published from 1835 to 1856, the Crockett almanacs were the primary force in the creation of a tall tale Davy Crockett as our country’s first comic superman. In these rare almanacs, the historical Crockett became a fictional backwoods screamer who could “run faster,–jump higher,–squat lower,–dive deeper,–stay under longer,–and come out drier, than any many in the whole country.” As the best known of the early ring-tailed roarers, Davy also became an integral building block in the humor of the Old Southwest. Ben Harding, Crockett’s fictional sidekick, warned nineteenth-century readers that the “terrificashus” adventures of Davy, Mike Fink, the “riproarious she-males,” and the fabulous woodcuts that illustrated them were so funny that “You had best to hoop your ribs before you reed ’em or you will shake your bowels out a Laffing.” Although the significance of the Nashville almanacs in initiating and developing Crockett’s mythic world is an accepted tenet in the study of American humor, the second series of almanacs has never before been reproduced in facsimile, and two thirds of the tales have never before been collected or reprinted in any readily accessible form. In his introduction, Michael A. Lofaro examines the history and evolution of these tall tales and stresses their importance both as transitional markers in the growth of the Crockett legend and as cultural mirrors of the attitudes of their publishers and readers.
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