It has, moreover, been frequently stated with equal confidence and inaccuracy that the authorship has never been settled.

An early and persistent version of the genesis of the travels was that they took their origin from the rivalry in fabulous tales of three accomplished students at Goettingen University, Buerger, Kaestner, and Lichtenberg; another ran that Gottfried August Buerger, the German poet and author of "Lenore," had at a later stage of his career met Baron Munchausen in Pyrmont and taken down the stories from his own lips.

Percy in his anecdotes attributes the Travels to a certain Mr.M.( Munchausen also began with an M.) who was imprisoned at Paris during the Reign of Terror.

Southey in his "Omniana" conjectured, from the coincidences between two of the tales and two in a Portuguese periodical published in 1730, that the English fictions must have been derived from the Portuguese.

William West the bookseller and numerous followers have stated that Munchausen owed its first origin to Bruce's Travels, and was written for the purpose of burlesquing that unfairly treated work.