The Autobiography of Mrs. Tom Thumb by Melanie Benjamin

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Little Lady with a Big Personality


The Autobiography of Mrs. Tom Thumb by Melanie Benjamin is a fictional account of the very real Lavinia Warren Bump, a woman whose height only reached two feet, eight inches, but who was a giant in spirit. 

Born in 1842, Vinnie was a lady ahead of her time. She was a feisty, self-assured woman who took life by the horns.  Despite her height, she was like a determined, spunky mini Scarlett O’Hara. Instead of hiding from the big world, she decided to face it head-on. Her mantra was, “I will not let my size define me.”[1] 

 When she was seventeen years old, against the wishes of her protective parents, she signed up to be a performer on Colonel Wood’s Floating Palace of Curiosities and Entertainment.  Life wasn’t easy there and Colonel Wood was not the decent, caring cousin he purported to be. So, it was a mixed blessing when, after years of touring, the Civil War began and put an end to their life on the Mississippi River. But Vinnie could never be content to live a lonely and uneventful existence at her parents’ farm in Massachusetts. She soon set her biggest dream into action when she contacted PT Barnum, the greatest showman on earth, and life took off like a speeding train. She joined the company of General Tom Thumb, a pint-sized sensation known the world over.  A few weeks after Vinnie’s debut at the lecture hall in PT Barnum’s Museum, even bigger news was announced.  Lavinia Warren was to marry Charles Stratton (General Tom Thumb) in a wedding that would rival any royal nuptual and even sidelined news of the Civil War which was raging throughout the country.  And now Mrs. Tom Thumb’s adventure really began. Lavinia became a worldwide celebrity and finally got to feel as big as her dreams.  

I loved this book!  I loved Vinnie’s plucky fortitude, her confident voice, and her resolve not just to survive, but to thrive.  Melanie Benjamin celebrates Vinnie’s difficult, sometimes harrowing and heart-breaking, many times glorious, and always extraordinary life in a beautiful narrative that will stay with me a long, long time. 

What a story!  What a woman! What a book!


This was a selection from my book club and the others loved the book as much as I did! Everyone enjoyed getting to know Vinnie.


What’s better than reading and eating?  In this section I’m combining good reads with good eats.  For this book about a little lady, I decided to make some lemon “short”bread cookies and see how many it would take to reach Lavinia’s height of 2’8”—and here’s the result, drum rolls please …. THIRTEEN! Lavinia was thirteen cookies tall! Imagine that.

By the way the cookies were yummy!  If you’re in the mood to make some, I found the recipe at https://www.jocooks.com/recipes/lemon-shortbread-cookies/


The cookies are quick and easy to make—so easy, my two-year-old granddaughter helped make them.  For the finishing touch, we used a terra cotta cookie stamp.  She just had to dip the stamp in a small bowl of sugar, then stamp the cookies and voila, she created instant cookie art!

My 2-year-old granddaughter stamping shortbread cookies.

BTW: Another good book by Melanie Benjamin is The Aviator's Wife.  Click to read review. 

Happy Reading, Happy Eating!

Annette 





[1]Melanie Benjamin, The Autobiography of Mrs. Tom Thumb (New York, Bantam Books Trade Paperbacks, 2012), 67. 

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