It is set into the floor adjacent to the font of the main chapel in Holy Trinity Church at Tattershall, Lincolnshire, UK.

The earliest surviving text is a 40-page booklet printed in London for Thomas Langley in 1621 entitled The History of Tom Thumbe, the Little, for his small stature surnamed, King Arthur's Dwarfe: whose Life and adventures containe many strange and wonderfull accidents, published for the delight of merry Time-spenders.

Reginald Scot listed Tom in his Discoverie of Witchcraft (1584) as one of the creatures used by servant maids to frighten children, along with witches, dwarfs, elves, fairies, giants, and other supernatural folk.

It is alluded to in Ben Jonson's masque of the Fortunate Isles: "Thomas Thumb in a pudding fat, with Doctor Rat.

"[3] Richard Johnson's History may have been in circulation as early as this date because the title page woodblock in the 1621 edition shows great wear.

A metrical version was published in 1630 entitled Tom Thumbe, His Life and Death: Wherein is declared many Maruailous Acts of Manhood, full of wonder, and strange merriments: Which little Knight liued in King Arthurs time, and famous in the Court of Great Brittaine.

Henry Fielding's tragedy Tom Thumb was the basis for an opera constructed by Kane O'Hara.

Fielding's Tom is cast as a mighty warrior and a conqueror of giants, despite his stature, as well as the object of desire for many of the ladies at court.

The plot is largely concerned with the various love triangles amongst the characters, who include Princess Huncamunca, giantess Glumdalca, and Queen Dollalolla (Arthur's wife in this version).

Matters are complicated when Arthur awards Tom the hand of Huncamunca in marriage which results in Dollalolla and the jealous Grizzle seeking revenge.

This version includes a happy ending in which Tom is spat back out by the cow and the others are resurrected by Merlin's magic.

In 1791, Joseph Ritson remarked that Tom's popularity was known far and wide: "Every city, town, village, shop, stall, man, woman, and child, in the kingdom, can bear witness to it.

In Charlotte Mary Yonge's 1856 adaptation, Tom resists his natural urges to play impish pranks, renounces his ties to Fairyland, and pronounces himself a Christian.

As Mordred's rebellion wears on in the last days of Arthur's reign, Tom refuses to return to Fairyland, preferring to die as an honorable Christian.

[4] In 1863, Dinah Maria Craik Mulock refused to cleanse the tale's questionable passages and let the story speak for itself.

She adds material, and Tom has adventures that again involve being swallowed by a miller and a salmon, being imprisoned in a mousetrap, angering King Thunston and his queen, and finally dying from the poisonous breath of a spider.

She provides Tom with an oak leaf hat, a shirt of cobweb, a doublet of thistledown, stockings of apple rind, and shoes of mouse's skin.

He goes home briefly to see his parents, taking some money from the treasury with the king's permission, then returns to court.

The Queene of Fayres finds him asleep on a rose and leaves him several gifts: an enchanted hat of knowledge, a ring of invisibility, a shape-changing girdle, and shoes to take him anywhere in a moment.

Tom falls seriously ill when a lady blows her nose, but is cured by the physician to King Twaddell of the Pygmies.

Dinah Mulock continued the tale and noted that Tom exhausted himself with jousting but recovered in Fairyland.

There are many thumb-sized characters around the world: Le petit poucet (France), Der kleine Däumling (Germany), Tommelise (Denmark), Little One Inch/Issun-bōshi (Japan), Si Kelingking (Indonesia), Thumbikin (Norway), Garbancito and Pulgarcito (Spain), Pollicino (Italy), Piñoncito (Chile), Липунюшка (Lipunyushka or No-Bigger-Than-A-Finger) (Russia),[6][7] Palčić (Serbia), Patufet (Catalonia), The Hazel-nut Child (Bukovina), Klein Duimpje and Pinkeltje (Netherlands), Hüvelyk Matyi (Hungary), Ko Ko Nga Latt Ma (Myanmar), দেড় আঙ্গুলে (Dēṛa āṅgulē) (Bengal), Sprīdītis (Latvia) and others.