Harmless to Homicidal:
A Collection of Hoaxes and Literary Forgeries
From the Library of Stephen R. Pastore

Annotated by Charles Williams
  The Titulus Christi (Titulus Crucis): The Placard (Title) on the Original Cross of Jesus (date unknown)
                 �And Pilate wrote a title, and put it on the cross. And the writing was JESUS OF NAZARETH THE KING OF THE JEWS. This title then read many of the Jews: for the place where Jesus was crucified was nigh to the city: and it was written in Hebrew, and Greek, and Latin. Then said the chief priests of the Jews to Pilate, Write not, The King of the Jews; but that he said, I am King of the Jews. Pilate answered, What I have written I have written...� John 19 KJV.
                During the reign of Constantine, his mother Helen visited the Holy Land in search of relics. She discovered the titulus and brought it back with her. It is now enshrined in the Church of Santa Croce in Italy. There are many diverse views on its authenticity and several forgeries were created based on the object in Italy. The titulus is 25x14 cm in size, 2.6 cm thick and has a weight of 687 g. It is inscribed on one side with three lines, of which the first one is mostly destroyed. The second line is written in Greek letters and reversed script, the third in Latin letters, also with reversed script. We can read the words
1.line: z�nh
2.line: BSUNERAZA(H)N.SI
3.line: ERSUNIRAZAN .I
Read from right to left, obviously in imitation of the Jewish way of writing, we can read: I. NAZARINUS RE, obviously a part of the inscription of the cross, as quoted in the Latin translation of the Gospel according to St. John (19,19) as "Iesus Nazarenus Rex Iudaeorum". Interestingly enough, the Greek line is a mere Greek transcription of the Latin line rather than a translation, in contrast to the original Greek quote of the Gospel according to St. John as "Ihsous Nazoraios Basileus ton Ioudaion". The variations from the version of St. John are:
1. The order of the lines (St. John: Hebrew, Latin, Greek; titulus: Hebrew, Greek, Latin)
2. The reverse writing, not mentioned by St. John
3. The Initials "JS" and "I." instead of the full name "Iesous/Iesus".
4. The use of the Latin "Nazarinus/Nazarenous" instead of the Greek "Nazoraios", even in the Greek line.
                Two experts, Prof. Thiede and Prof. Roll, consider this a major indication of the authenticity of the titulus. First of all, a variation of John. 19,19 is a freedom no forger would ever risk. But it makes sense, since Pontius Pilatus, who, according to the gospels, dictated the inscription, was a Roman magistrate and used, especially for official documents, the official language Latin. It was up to the writer to create a version in the other two languages, and therefore it was rather unlikely that he transferred the term "Nazarinus" in the correct Greek form. The abbreviation of the name "Iesous/Iesus" as "I." is typical for Roman Latin inscriptions. Since "Yeshu/Yehoshua" was a common name during the 1st century, Flavius Josephus mentions 16 persons with this name, the unique "Nazarinus" rather pointed to the Savior from a small village in Galilee, at least for a Roman magistrate, although such an abbreviation in contrast to John 19,19 would be unthinkable for a Christian forger.
                None of the consulted experts for Hebrew, Greek and Latin paleography found any indication of a mediaeval or late antique forgery. Instead, they all dated it in the timeframe between the early first century AD. Therefore, it is possible that the "Titulus Crucis" at Santa Croce is indeed the placard of the cross of Jesus. Needless to say, Christian relic forgery was a huge business in late medieval times and continued well into the 19^th century. The Shroud of Turin, the �Spear of Jesus� and the myriad pieces of the �original cross� have made skeptics of many people.
1. A recent forgery of the Titulus Crucis.
  The Donation of Constantine (c. 330)
                 The Donation of Constantine was a document supposedly written by emperor Constantine (285-337 A.D.) granting the Catholic Church ownership of vast territories within the western Roman Empire. The document stated that he made this generous gift out of gratitude to Pope Sylvester I who had converted him to Christianity and had cured him of leprosy. For centuries the Donation legitimized the Church's possession of the papal lands in Italy. Unfortunately, the Donation was a forgery and a hoax of unknown origin, although it likely originated within the Church�s hierarchy.
                The truth is that the Church only officially acquired the papal lands in 756 A.D. when King Pepin of the Frankish Empire gave them to the Church as a gift. 756 A.D. also appears to be the time when the text of the Donation first appeared. It was probably created by a cleric either in Rome or the Frankish court. Its purpose may have been to allow the King to claim that he was returning, not giving, the papal lands to the Church. In this way, the fiction of the Donation added legitimacy to a convenient political marriage between the Catholic Church and the Frankish state.
                The Donation was not revealed to be a forgery until 1440. In that year Lorenzo Valla published his Discourse on the Forgery of the Alleged Donation of Constantine, in which he enumerated the large number of historical anachronisms that pervaded the work. For instance, it referred to Byzantia as a province when in the fourth century it was only a city; it referred to temples in Rome that did not yet exist; and it referred to 'Judea' even though in Constantine's time the Romans referred to this territory as 'Palestina.' Valla could have added that Emperor Constantine never had leprosy, making it impossible for Pope Sylvester to have cured him of this disease. The Catholic Church suppressed Valla's work for years. Centuries later, it publicly conceded that the Donation was a fake.
                The Catholic Church ceded the Papal States back to Italy in 1929.
2. Coleman, Christopher B (trans.). The Treatise of Lorenzo Valla on the Donation of Constantine. Toronto: University Press, 1993 (2000). This edition, in dual Latin - English texts reproduces both the original Donation and Valla's Treatise in a critically annotated form.
  The Forged Treason Letters of Mary, Queen of Scots (1574)
When Mary Queen of Scots was perceived by the counselors to Elizabeth I as a threat, they could not convince Elizabeth to execute her own cousin. Letters were found in Mary�s trunk (casket) that indicated she was preparing a forceful overthrow of Elizabeth and the restoration of Catholicism to the kingdom. Seeing these letters, Elizabeth reluctantly consented to Mary�s execution. Mary vehemently denied writing them. She was nonetheless executed. The letters, it turns out, were forged, most likely by one of Elizabeth�s chamberlains.
3. Goodall, Walter. Examination of the letters, said to be written by Mary, Queen of Scots. An examination of the letters, said to be written by Mary Queen of Scots, to James Earl of Bothwell: shewing by intrinsick and extrinsick evidence, that they are forgeries. Also, an inquiry into the murder of King Henry. Edinburgh: printed by T. and W. Ruddimans, 1754. With an engraved portrait in Vol. I. Two vols. First edition. The first full-fledged exposure of the celebrated "casket letters." Goodall worked as a librarian in the Advocates' Library, Edinburgh. "The work may be regarded as the inauguration of the apologist epoch of the literature relating to the unhappy queen. It shows acuteness and diligence, and many of his arguments are still made to do service in vindication of Mary."
  The Eikon Basilike (1648)
                 Published after the execution of Charles I to prove that he was noble and humanitarian king despite everyone�s knowledge to the contrary, this book was instrumental in restoring the monarchy after the death of Charles�s executioner, Oliver Cromwell. The emblematic frontispiece appeared in the first edition of the Eikon Basilike and was included in many later editions. The frontispiece engraving, playing on the Greek title Eikon Basilike (translated as "royal portrait"), represents Charles I. Kneeling in prayer with his earthly crown at his feet, Charles reverently fixes his eyes on a heavenly crown, while holding in his hand a crown of thorns, symbol of suffering and martyrdom. The praying figure introduces the subject matter of Charles's book, which consists largely of the King's personal meditations and prayers. When Charles was executed at Whitehall on 30 January 1649, advance copies were already circulating. Within a month and a half of Charles's death approximately twenty English editions had been printed in England. By the end of 1649, thirty-five English editions had been printed in England. It would shortly come to be the most widely read and discussed work of royalist propaganda from the English Civil War. Doubts about Charles's authorship of the work were expressed almost as soon as it was published and continued to provoke controversy into the 1690s. This book was instrumental in restoring the monarchy after Cromwell�s death.
4. [King Charles I.] Eikon Basilike, the Pourtraicture of His Sacred Majesty. N.p. [London.] N.d. [1648.]
A rare advance copy of the first edition, later printed in huge numbers and widely distributed in, for the time, an unusually small size so as to be easily concealed on the person. This copy of a first edition, specially bound for a noblewoman, disguised in the pink calf binding of a prayerbook.
George Psalmanazar (1679? � 1763); a/k/a George Psalmanaazaar
                 Those who traveled on European roads at the start of the eighteenth century must have met many unusual characters, but one character they might have met would have proven more unusual than the rest. He was a young man who claimed to be from the faraway land of Formosa (now known as Taiwan).
                There were just a few problems with the young man's claim of Formosan nationality. First, his skin was white, and his hair was blond. Second, he spoke fluent Latin (which wouldn't be a problem in and of itself), but he did so with a hint of a Dutch accent.
                Still, at the beginning of the eighteenth century most of the world remained a mystery to Europeans, and so they had no idea what a real Formosan should look like. They only knew that Formosa was a very distant land where the people undoubtedly had very different customs. And this man certainly had different customs. He occasionally babbled in an unknown language. He worshipped the sun and the moon. He slept upright in a chair with a lamp burning, and he ate heavily spiced raw meat. What better evidence of foreignness could anyone possibly want?
                But what really made his story compelling to the Protestants that he encountered was his dislike of the Jesuits. He claimed that he had been fooled into leaving Formosa by a disguised Jesuit missionary. His story played perfectly into the paranoid Protestant fantasy that the Jesuits were sending secret agents throughout the world to trick foreign nations into converting to Catholicism. Protestants figured that if this young man didn't like Jesuits, then he must be worthy of their trust.
                In 1702 the man from Formosa (he had no other name at that time) arrived in Holland and met a Scottish clergyman called William Innes who was serving in the English army. Innes probably saw through the deception right away, but he also knew a good thing when he saw it. He knew that it would help his career if he could present the church with an exotic convert.
                So Innes converted the Formosan to Anglicanism, baptized him with the Christian name George Psalmanazar, and brought him to England to meet the Bishop of London. When the Bishop heard Psalmanazar's strange story of Jesuit intrigue, he embraced him with open arms, as did the rest of British high society. The elite ladies and gentlemen of England treated Psalmanazar as an exotic curiosity. Even the Royal Society took an interest in him.
                Of course, Psalmanazar's story did not convince everyone, especially not the Jesuits. The Jesuit Father Fontaney, who was traveling through England at that time, challenged Psalmanazar to a debate which Psalmanazar accepted. But the debate proved inconclusive because Fontaney simply didn't know enough about Formosa to seriously challenge any of Psalmanazar's claims. For instance, when asked why his skin was not darker in color like that of other people from Asia, Psalmanazar replied that in Formosa the members of the nobility lived indoors and therefore had lighter skin than the laborers who worked outside. For all anyone in England knew, this could very well have been true.
                Soon Psalmanazar capitalized on his fame by publishing a book titled An Historical and Geographical Description of Formosa, in which he offered British readers an intriguing and sensational glimpse at Formosan culture. He claimed that in Formosa convicted murderers were hung upside down and shot full of arrows, that polygamy was allowed, and that every year 20,000 young boys were sacrificed to appease the gods (this latter claim was accompanied by a gruesome illustration of 'The Gridiron upon which the hearts of the young Children are burnt'). Psalmanazar also obtained an appointment at Oxford College to translate religious literature into Formosan.
                But doubts continued to circulate about Psalmanazar's true identity. These doubts became harder and harder to ignore until finally, in 1706, Psalmanazar confessed to his imposture, supposedly motivated by a religious experience that convinced him of the sinfulness of his deception. He spent the rest of his life working as an editor and a writer on Grub Street. At one point he even contributed a section about Formosa to a work titled Geography of the World, though this article, unlike his previous book, was truthful. Many years later, he wrote a long confession titled Memoirs of ****, Commonly Known by the Name of George Psalmanazar. This work was published posthumously in 1765, a year after his death.
                Who was Psalmanazar really, and why did he perpetrate this deception? Surprisingly little is known about his true identity. In his memoir he claimed to be of French Catholic heritage. He wrote that he adopted the life of a vagabond after growing bored with his studies as a young man. While on the road he discovered that posing as a foreigner was a convenient way to con funds from sympathetic strangers. But he claimed that the deception only rose to a greater level because of the ambition of the clergyman Innes. Given Psalmanazar's record of dishonesty, it is not clear whether this explanation is the truth, or yet another of his fabrications.
5. Psalmanaazaar, George. An Historical and Geographical Description of Formosa, an Island subject to the Emperor of Japan (etc. etc.) By George Psalmanaazaar, a Native of the said Island, now in London. London: Printed for Dan. Brown (etc.), 1704. First edition.
6. Another copy showing the �Formosan Alphabet.�
  James Macpherson (1736-1796)
                 James Macpherson was born in Ruthven, Badenoch , Scotland on 27th October 1736 and attended both Aberdeen and Edinburgh Universities before returning to his native district as a teacher. By 1758 he had moved to Edinburgh where he worked as a tutor and tried to make his name as a poet.
Celticism was then in vogue through the "discovery" of Welsh bardic poetry. The excitement generated by a Gaelic ballad published in the Scots magazine in 1756 may have spurred Macpherson to similar activity.              In 1760 he published Fragments of Ancient Poetry, which gave glimpses of a rugged, ancient land inhabited by venerable warriors brooding on past glories. Macpherson claimed to be merely the translator.
                These "translations" gave Macpherson a success his original compositions had not achieved. Having claimed that the "fragments" represented larger works still obtainable, he was encouraged to collect more. Before long Macpherson published his main works, Fingal and Temora: verse translations (or so he claimed) of epic poems by Ossian, an ancient blind poet, commemorating the exploits of a warrior race flourishing in Scotland in pre-Christian times.
                The success of these works was phenomenal. Innumerable editions in most European languages bear testimony to the magic of their elemental landscapes and the proud, melancholy men who haunted them. Comparisons with Homer were frequent. However, there was also controversy, since some critics accused Macpherson of forgery and deception. The debate took on political overtones and continued throughout Macpherson's lifetime, and still colors people's attitudes towards Macpherson, and towards Gaelic poetry.
                In truth, there were no third-century Gaelic epics preserved, even fragmentarily, by eighteenth century tradition-bearers. There were, however, orally preserved heroic ballads in which larger-than-life characters (including Fionn and Oisean) repelled invaders and had adventures in stylistically distanced, linguistically archaic verse. Reminiscences of this poetry are embedded in Macpherson's texts, and he perhaps saw himself as reconstituting epics from fragmentary remains. Yet much of the poetry is his own, and his "learned" commentaries are disingenuous.
                Opinions vary as to Macpherson's literary standing. Distaste for his deception has loaded the dice against him, as have contemporary preferences for the realism of Gaelic folk-poetry. Ironically, Thomas Jefferson considered Ossian to be �the greatest poet that ever lived.� Most non-Scots, however, disagree and find the poetry overblown and boring. On the other hand, Macpherson's influence on European literature (e.g. on Goethe and the German Romantics) is undeniable.
                Macpherson himself took little part in the controversy after its initial exchanges, in which he clashed famously with Dr Samuel Johnson. In 1764 he was assigned to an administrative post in Florida. In 1766 he returned to England, where he lived in considerable comfort as a historian, lobbyist and pensioned Government propagandist. In his last years he returned to Badenoch, where he died in 1796. He was buried, at his own direction, in Westminster Abbey.
7. Macpherson, James. Fingal, an Ancient Epic Poem, in Six Books First Edition Title page printed in red and black with copperplate vignette by Is. Taylor from an earlier rendition of S. Wade. 270 pp. Armorial bookplate of William Wrightston of the Cusworth Estate in Yorkshire on the front paste-down with Mr. Wrightson's signature at the top margin of the title page. This work caused an uproar in 18th Century England because MacPherson refused to divulge his sources for his "translation." It was alleged by some, Dr. Johnson most stridently, that the work was entirely made up. MacPherson and Dr. Johnson exchanged barbed letterers and the entire event was fodder for the media. Dr. Johnson had the best line - ".stubborn audacity is the last refuge of guilt." This is a fine copy of what remains, in spite of the controversy, an important work.
8. Macpherson, James (trans.) The Poems of Ossian. In Three Volumes.   London: William Miller, 1805. First edition of the forged Ossian Poems.
9. [Macpherson, James.] Davies, Edward. The Claims of Ossian, Examined and Appreciated. Swansea: H. Griffith, 1825.
10. Macpherson, James (trans.) Temora: An Epic Poem. London: Elibron Classics, 2005. A modern edition of the poem without any recognition of its hoax status. Still lists Macpherson as merely the �translator.�
   Thomas Chatterton (1752 � 1770)
                 As a young boy growing up in Bristol, Thomas Chatterton (1752-1770) spent a great deal of time with his uncle, the sexton of the St. Mary Radcliffe Church. A sensitive, artistic child, Chatterton began to imagine what the life of the monks who had lived in the church during the fifteenth century must have been like. He even invented in his mind the character of a 15th century priest named Thomas Rowley.
                Most children manage to maintain a line between their imaginary life and reality, but Chatterton's medieval fantasy world materialized into solid, tangible form when he claimed to find poetry tucked away in a back room of the church that had been written by his imaginary priest. He showed it to the law partner of his employer, a Bristol attorney, who believed it to be authentic 15th century material and bought it from him.
                Emboldened by this success, Chatterton began 'finding' more of Rowley's poetry. He also produced poems using his own name, but found that anything by Chatterton was ignored, whereas work by Rowley was eagerly sought after.
                In April, 1770 Chatterton left for London, determined to make it on his own merits as a writer. But a mere four months later, unable to find any work, without money, and near starvation, he penned a farewell poem and poisoned himself with arsenic. He was only seventeen years old. It was widely believed at the time that this was a suicide attributable to the foppish writer Horace Walpole (himself the hoax-writer of The Castle of Otranto) who dogged Chatterton mercilessly in the press. New information reveals that it was likely Chatterton overdosed on arsenic either as the prevailing cure for venereal disease or as the eighteenth century equivalent of the illicit drug �Ecstasy.� Walpole should likely be exonerated from guilt in spurring on the suicide because his last attack preceded the death by a year.
                Upon his death, Chatterton's work was discovered and published. It ended up becoming quite popular and exerted an enormous influence upon the later Romantic poets. Wordsworth, for instance, referred to him as 'the marvelous boy' and Keats dedicated �Endymion� to him.
11. Chatterton, Thomas. Poems, Supposed to Have Been Written at Bristol, in the Fifteenth Century, by Thomas Rowley. London: T. Payne & Son, 1777. Extremely rare first edition, untrimmed.
12. Chatterton, Thomas. Poems, Supposed to Have Been Written at Bristol, in the Fifteenth Century, by Thomas Rowley. London: T. Payne & Son, 1794, with Coleridge�s Tribute to Chatterton.
13. Gregory, G[eorge.] The Life of Thomas Chatteron with Criticisms on His Genius and Writings. London: G. Kearsley, 1789.
14. The Death of Chatterton. By Henry Wallis, 1856. Oil reproduction of the original painting now hanging in the Tate Gallery, London.
  William Henry Ireland (1775 � 1835)
                 As literacy rates rose during the eighteenth century, a kind of cult-like reverence for the work of William Shakespeare emerged. Theaters staged his plays repeatedly, and collectors eagerly sought out any relics related to his life.
                The bookseller Samuel Ireland was one of the most passionate of these Shakespeare-worshiping relic hunters. He devoted his life to the pursuit of Shakespeariana, in the process neglecting his talented young son, William Henry Ireland (1777-1835). That is, until his son brought home from the law office where he worked a mortgage document signed by Shakespeare himself.
                William Henry Ireland (Samuel's son) brought home the Shakespeare document in 1794. He was ony eighteen at the time. He claimed that he had found the document among the estate papers of a client who desired to remain anonymous. Samuel Ireland was ecstatic at what his son had found, and grew even more so when William continued to bring home other spectacular finds, including a love letter written by Shakespeare to Anne Hathaway and a previously unknown historical drama by the Bard titled Vortigern.
                Arrangements were made for Vortigern to be performed at the Drury Lane Theatre on April 2, 1796. The theater's owner half-suspected a fraud, but decided that there was enough public interest in the play, whether or not it was a fake, to warrant a performance.
                The actors, however, were not so willing to play along. To indicate their displeasure, they hammed their way through the performance, and when the lead actor, J.P. Kemble, arrived at the line "And when this solemn mockery is ended," he delivered it with such emphasis that everyone in the audience knew he was referring to the play itself. This prompted a riotous outburst of laughter and applause.
                After that infamous opening night, the play was never performed again. A few weeks later William Henry confessed that the play and other documents were all his own work. His father, however, refused to believe the confession and insisted until the day he died that the Shakespearean treasures his son had brought home all had been genuine.
15. [Ireland, William Henry.] Autograph Letter Signed by William Shakespeare. One of the original Shakespeare forgeries from the collection of Ireland�s father, Samuel. Listed and transcribed in The Confessions. Many of the forgeries were destroyed in a fire, some are in institutional collections. This one of the only forgeries in private hands.
16. [Ireland, William Henry.] � William Shakespeare.� Vortigern. London: printed for J. Barker; B. White; T. Egerton; and R. Faulder [1799], 1799. Two parts in one volume, 8vo, (ii), xi, (i), 75, (1); (ii), iii, (i), 77, (1) pp., bound with an incomplete copy of Ireland's Authentic account of the Shakespeare manuscripts, 1796. First edition. This copy has the rare general title-page, as is correct, and the separate titles to each part; many copies of Vortigern have been separated into their component parts and the general title discarded, but the two parts belong together. Vortigern represents the most ambitious of Samuel Ireland's attempts at forging the writings of Shakespeare. It was in 1796 that Ireland first attempted to put Vortigern on the stage. Aside from experiencing great difficulty in finding anyone willing to perform the play, Ireland's attackers were by this stage gathering strength, and it was on the eve of the first performance that Malone's damning Inquiry into the authenticity of certain miscellaneous papers appeared. As a result of this, and of Kemble's deliberate attempt to wreck the play, the first performance dissolved into a riot of hilarity and derision. Uncommon in its correct complete state.
17. [Ireland, William Henry.] �William Shakespeare.� Henry the Second. London: J. Barker, 1799. First edition. Another entirely new Shakespeare play by Ireland, this one never performed.
18. [Ireland, William Henry.] Effusions of Love from Chatelar to Mary Queen of Scotland. Translated from a Gallic Manuscript, in the Scotch College, at Paris. London: C. Chapple, 1805. Another complete forgery by Ireland. Published anonymously. This with initials of Ireland and extensive notes on the rear pastedown in his hand. Front free fly excised, possibly by Ireland in frustration. See, The Great Shakespeare Fraud at 121.
19. [Ireland, William Henry.] The Confessions of William Henry Ireland. London: Ellerton & Byworth, 1805. First edition. An attempt at taking blame and shifting it from his father.
20. [Ireland, William Henry.] Chalcographimania: or, the Portrait-Collector and Printseller�s Chronicle with Infatuations of Every Description. London: R.S. Kirby, 1814. Attacks book collectors.
21. [Ireland, William Henry.] Scribbleomania by Anser Pen-Drag-On. London: Sherwood, Neely & Jones, 1815. An off-balance ranting attack by the forger on the poets of his day.
22. [Ireland, William Henry.]The Modern Ship of Fools. London. William Miller. 1807. Wood Engraving by Austin on Title Page. (illustrator). First Edition. Titio Sebastien wrote a very popular work 'Navis Stultifera' in 1488, which was translated into English by [Alexander] Barclay 1508. This book of the same title by William Henry Ireland attacks literary scholars of his day.
The Spurious Letters Attributed to Washington (1777)
An unknown forger produced a large number of personal and lengthy letters of Washington to his wife and others, claiming they were found in a town overrun by the British in a battle. The letters purportedly show Washington as a great admirer of George III and a reluctant and disheartened general involved in a revolution that has no merit. These were widely circulated to drum up support for continued British invasions of America and were not discovered to be forgeries until some years later.
23. Ford, Worthington, ed. The Spurious Letters Attributed to Washington. Brooklyn, NY: Privately Printed, 1889. Limited to 500 copies. This, the only copy in private hands, of an extremely rare paperback edition that was recalled and pulped to discourage any dissension between Britain and the United States at a time of important financial dealings between the two nations.
  The Margaret Nicholson Hoax (1820)
Margaret Nicholson: daughter of a barber of Stockton-on-Tees, Durham; housemaid in three or more families; deserted by her lover, a valet, around the time of leaving her last position; lodged in the house of a stationer in Marylebone for about three years, supporting herself by taking in needlework; aged about 36, sent a petition to the Privy Council concerning usurpers and pretenders to the throne, Jul 1786; standing with a crowd at the garden entrance to St James's Palace to see the King arrive from Windsor, presented him with a paper as he alighted from his carriage, and at the same time attempted unsuccessfully to stab him, Aug 1786; at her second blow a royal attendant took the knife from her; immediately examined by the Privy Council, but a doctor declined to diagnose insanity at once; letters expressing a belief of her entitlement to the throne were found at her lodgings; again brought before the Privy Council, she was declared insane by two physicians and committed to the Bedlam Hospital; Percy Bysshe Shelley and Thomas Jefferson Hogg, then undergraduates at Oxford, published a volume of burlesque verses attacking the King and the court�s proceedings, claiming the verses were in her possession. Nicholson remained in Bedlam until her death, 1828. Shelley went on to bigger and better things.
24. [Shelley, Percy Bysshe, & Thomas Jefferson Hogg]. Posthumous Fragments of Margaret Nicholson, edited by her nephew, John FitzVictor.   London: Richard Herne Shepherd, 1810. First Edition.
  John Payne Collier (1789 � 1883)
                 John Payne Collier was born in London on January 11, 1789, the son of John Dyer Collier, a prominent journalist. After an attempt at becoming a lawyer, John Payne Collier began writing for The Times and other periodicals. Collier was an accomplished Parliamentary reporter by the time he was twenty and earned enough income to feed his growing interest in books and literature.
                Although Collier continued to work as a political journalist, by his late twenties he was devoting more time to his literary interests and contributed numerous essays and poetry to literary periodicals. In 1820, Collier's book The Poetical Decameron, or Ten Conversations on English Poets and Poetry was published. He became known as an authority on the history of the English stage and also began writing theater reviews. In 1828, Collier became the librarian to the Duke of Devonshire, who possessed one of the finest private libraries in England. Here Collier developed an interest in Shakespeare. In 1840, he founded the Shakespeare Society and by 1841 Collier's reputation as a Shakespeare scholar had risen to such heights that he was solicited to edit a new edition of the works of Shakespeare which was published, in eight volumes, between 1841-1843.
                Collier retired in 1850, though he continued to devote a good deal of time to his Shakespeare research. Two years later he announced the discovery of a copy of the Second Folio of Shakespeare's plays which contained extensive manuscript annotations and corrections in a hand seemingly contemporary with the book's 1632 publication. The volume became known as the Perkins Folio because it contained the inscription "Tho. Perkins, his booke" on the outer cover. Collier published his findings in Notes and Emendations to the Text of Shakspere's Plays: from Early Manuscript Corrections in a Copy of the Folio, 1632 in the Possession of J. Payne Collier (1853). He subsequently edited a new edition of Shakespeare's plays incorporating the corrections and changes he had discovered.
                According to Collier, his examination of the Perkins Folio revealed numerous manuscript notations, ranging from simple changes in punctuation, to revised stage directions and entire new lines. Collier's findings caused a sensation in Shakespeare circles and his contemporaries pleaded with him to allow a thorough examination of the volume, but he never granted anyone more than a cursory look at the book. As might be expected, his claims were questioned by a number of critics, notably Samuel Weller Singer and Alexander Dyce, both of whom published critiques of Collier shortly after the publication of Notes and Emendations. Though challenged, Collier was unyielding and might have remained so if not for the death of his patron, the Duke of Devonshire, in 1858.
                Shortly after Collier claimed to have discovered the Perkins Folio, he presented the volume to the Duke. Following the Duke's death, his heir donated the Perkins Folio to the British Museum. There it was examined thoroughly by experts and in July, 1859, Nicholas S. E. A. Hamilton, Assistant Keeper of Manuscripts at the British Museum, determined that the manuscript annotations had been written in the 19^th century, not the 17^th. The implication was quite obvious: John Payne Collier had forged the emendations in the Perkins Folio.
                Although Collier had defenders, the evidence against him continued to mount. The publication of Hamilton's An Inquiry into the Genuineness of the Manuscript Corrections in Mr. J. Payne Collier's Annotated Shakspere, Folio, 1632: and of Certain Shaksperian Documents Likewise Published by Mr. Collier (1860) summarized the analysis done at the British Museum. But the most direct attack came from the critic Clement Mansfield Ingleby, who in 1859 had accused Collier of deceit in The Shakspere Fabrications. Ingleby built upon the evidence that had been amassed by various critics and produced A Complete View of the Shakespeare Controversy which was published in 1861. Ingleby summarized all of the evidence in the case and accused Collier outright of having forged the manuscript annotations in the Perkins Folio. Collier never responded to this attack and his guilt was established by implication.
                Collier continued his scholarly endeavors for the duration of his life--he even edited another edition of Shakespeare--but his reputation remained tarnished. Following Collier's death, new discoveries were made which suggested he had produced other forgeries and he remains an unfortunate figure in the history of English letters. Although Collier produced some of the most important works of legitimate scholarship of his era, his forgeries have tainted these accomplishments permanently and his reputation has never recovered. Thomas James Wise, fifty years later, followed the same path
25. Collier, John Payne. Notes and Emendations to the Text of Shakespeare�s Plays: Early Manuscript Corrections. London: Whittaker & Co., 1853.

26. Collier, John Payne. The History of English Dramatic Poetry: To the Time of Shakespeare and Annals of the Stage to the Restoration. Vol. I , II & III. London: John Murray, 1831.

27 Collier, John Payne. Old Ballads from the Early Printed Copies of the Utmost Rarity. London: The Percy Society, 1860. A collection of early English ballads with 14 Collier forgeries thrown in for no apparent reason.
28. Tannenbaum, Samuel A. Shakspere Forgeries in the Revels Accounts. New York: Columbia University Press, 1028. Limited to 500 copies of this edition, being number 1. Inscribed by the author. A detailed examination of Collier�s �planted� information which misled scholars for over fifty years.
  Constantine Simonides (1820 - 1867)
                 Constantine Simonides was born in the island of Symi, on the coast of the Aegean Sea, in 1820. He studied at a monastery near his home at the age of 16 where he came into contact with a large cache of ancient manuscripts. He practiced duplicating them and he stole some. When his parents discovered the documents under his bed and confronted him, he tried unsuccessfully to poison them. He left home shortly thereafter at the age of 25.
                Simonides' first destination was Athens, where he managed to persuade some scholars that he had discovered an enormous number of totally unknown and previously unpublished ancient Greek, Hellenistic and early Byzantine manuscripts, some by Homer. (Current thinking is that the poet, Homer, never really existed but is actually a composite of several ancient unknown writers that created The Iliad and The Odyssey.) He sold these forgeries to the King of Greece.
                He also forged a number of documents which he claimed were the originals of the Gospel of Mark. These he translated along with a number of other �gospels.� His forgeries were exposed by Greek scholars quite quickly, but the texts never made it to the rest of Europe where his forgeries were revered as �first editions� of The New Testament.

29. Simonides, Constantine. Facsimiles of Certain Portions of The Gospel of St Mark. London: Trubner and Co., 79 pages. Folio. Edited and illustrated by Constantine Simonides. This volume has a fascinating inscription by a prior owner (Martha I. Blunk of Salt Lake City) stating that the documents shown within, �date to the time of Christ when he (sic) lived upon Earth amoung (sic) man or men��
  Denis Vrain-Lucas (1825 � 1881)
                 On a cold, damp day in February 1870, the Correctional Tribunal of Paris sentenced Denis Vrain-Lucas to prison for forging and selling over 27,000 historical letters to many of France's leading collectors. The sensational trial exposed the most colossal literary fraud ever perpetrated. The trial revealed that for 19 years, Lucas created fake literary masterpieces, mostly letters to and from famous or historical figures, and became a very wealthy man because of it. At first, Lucas used quills, inks, papers, and styles of writing used by historical French authors. As the years passed and his forgeries were accepted into the foremost collections in the nation, his ego got the best of him. When he produced a host of letters written by Mary Magdalene to Lazarus, Cleopatra to Caesar, Pompey to Cato - in modern French - and boldly sold them to one of France's leading collectors, Michel Chasles, noted mathematician and prominent member of France�s Academy of Mathematics and Science, the forgeries were put up to public scrutiny where they failed miserably. Chasles was repeatedly in front of the Academy forced to defend the veracity of the patently spurious documents. It is important to note that virtually every forged document had a common theme: that the French were the real discovers of all important scientific and medical breakthroughs and that France was the country of choice even for Biblical figures. Vrain-Lucas simply utilized the chauvinistic French mentality as a selling tool. Chasles died believing that his documents were genuine.
30. Etienne Charavay. Affaire Vrain Lucas. Etude critique sur la collect: plaquette in-8, broch�e, IV + 32 pp., le meilleur expert en autographes de l'�poque, donne son analyse de l'affaire Vrain Lucas. Ayant assist� personnellement au proc�s en f�vrier 1870, il a pu mesurer son retentissement aupr�s du public, et aussi s'en inqui�ter. Sa brochure contient des d�tails in�dits sur le genre d'individu qu'�tait Vrain Lucas et elle s'emploie � rassurer les amateurs sur l'authenticit� des documents qui alimentent le commerce des autographes.. The first expose of what the press called �The Vrain-Lucas Affair.�
31. Chasles, Michel (1793-1880). Autograph Letter Signed ("Chasles"). n.p., 17 June 1860. 8vo., 1p., Letter from the victim of Lucas who purchased nearly $150,000 worth of bogus letters. His numerous lectures on the content of the letters and then his defense of the endless attacks on their veracity exhausted him. Translated from the French: "My dear Colleague, I am approaching you to ask you to be so kind to stand in for me tomorrow at the Academy, where, by all appearances, I will not be able to get myself�, that would be useful, because time is running out. Please accept, dear Colleague, my kindest and humble greetings, Yours respectfully, Chasles. Sunday night, June 17, 1860." In 1837 Chasles published his first major work, Aper�u historique sur l origine et le d�veloppement des m�thodes en g�om�trie (Historical view of the origin and development of methods in geometry), which quickly made his reputation as both a mathematician and as an historian of mathematics. Aper�u historique is still an important historical reference. He became professor at the Ecole Polytechnique in Paris in 1841.
31A. Rosenblum, Joseph. Prince of Forgers: The Incredible Story of Vrain-Lucas, who created over 27,000 literary forgeries and sold them for millions and the glory of France! New Castle (DE): Oak Knoll Press, 1998.
ROBERT SPRING (1813 � 1876)
                 None of the many George Washington forgers has shown the skill or ingenuity of an enterprising Englishman named Robert Spring. Born in England in 1813, Spring came to the United States as a young man and opened a book shop in Philadelphia. He may well have intended to make an honest living, but when he found the bookseller's trade less than profitable he soon discovered that he had a freewheeling imagination and a real talent for larceny.
                Boasting a dignified demeanor and an impeccable British accent, Spring used his bookshop as a base for launching a new venture into free enterprise. Using a goose quill pen and his own special mixture of antiquated ink, he began forging letters on sheets of paper cut from the front or back of old books. Capitalizing on the enormous veneration nineteenth century Americans had for the first president, Spring specialized in Washington autographs. When he could acquire access to genuine documents he simply traced them, but most of his Washington forgeries were written freehand, after hours of practice in an attempt to reproduce Washington's flowing script.
                Spring's operating procedures were outlined at his trial for forgery in Philadelphia in 1869: "He would obtain, by some means, a genuine letter and then trace it on a sheet of paper, which he stained with coffee grounds to give it the appearance of age. The bogus letter would be enclosed in a note and addressed to some gentleman who had a fine private library. The note stated that the writer was in want of money, and if the recipient desired the autograph letter he could send money to a certain address. He received a number of replies containing remittances varying from $10 to $15, the letters being addressed to several post offices within a few miles of this city."
                Spring's demands were modest, and apparently, the customers lined up. His activities were soon detected, however, and he was arrested in Philadelphia in 1858. He skipped bail and took his business elsewhere--namely to Canada where he posed as an impecunious widow attempting to dispose of her husband's estate. Naturally the widow's inheritance consisted principally of handsome autograph letters of important historical personages. Encouraged by the credulity of Canadians, Spring made another attempt on the American market. He returned to the United States--probably in the early 1860s--settled in Baltimore, and proceeded to open a lively trade in Washington documents, following generally the same procedure he had used in Philadelphia but with a new twist. He now offered his products primarily to British autograph collectors.
                Capitalizing on the popularity of Stonewall Jackson in England, he posed as the Confederate general's daughter, fallen on hard times and compelled to sell her father's papers, which coincidentally seemed to consist largely of handsome specimens of Washington, Franklin, Jefferson, and of course Jackson, documents. Although Spring's movements during the 1860s are still unclear, he apparently did not confine his activities entirely to the Baltimore area since he was again arrested for forgery in Philadelphia in 1869. Candidly admitting his guilt, he again stood trial and this time served a prison term, dying in poverty in the charity ward of a Philadelphia hospital in 1876.
                Spring's forgeries fall into several categories. Although there are a number of multipage letters, perhaps copies from an original document, Spring's most common forgeries consist of an order drawn by Washington on the Office of Discount and Deposit in Baltimore or a Revolutionary pass through American lines. A typical example of the pass reads:
Head Quarters
Valley Forge
Feby 5th 1778
Permission is granted to Mr. John Edwards with his Negro boy Jack to pass and repass this picket at Ramapo.
Go: Washington
                The Papers of George Washington staff has acquired innumerable copies of this pass issued to Mr. Johnson and Sam, to Mr. Smith and Tim, to Mr. Carson and Henry, and so on. The pass is so frequently issued to variously named persons and their servants to pass the lines at Ramapo, New Jersey, that manuscript dealer Charles Hamilton has quoted one disgruntled owner as observing that Ramapo may indeed have seen the first traffic jam in American history. One of the defrauded owners wanted to have a club where all the forged pass owners could regularly meet and �weep� for their mutual gullibility. Since none of the passes unearthed so far bears the same name, it is evident that Spring changed the names on the document each time he encountered an affluent victim, simply making out a pass to order. His research into potential victims often led him to make out a pass in the name of an ancestor of a wealthy family, thus ensuring a sale.
                The pass and indeed other Spring forgeries often have a convincing provenance. Present-day owners are able to claim with complete sincerity that the document has been in their family for generations. Since the pass was issued to someone bearing their name there is no reason to doubt that it was not indeed issued to a Revolutionary ancestor. Spring's passes early found their way into public repositories both in the United States and abroad. The Washington project has received one pass through the lines from a major state historical society accompanied by a provenance indicating that it had been presented to the society by the governor of the state in 1867.
                Even more common than the pass through the lines is a short letter addressed to Jabez Huntington, "Sheriff of the County of Windham, Connt.," stating that "at the urgent solicitation of several of the Selectmen and respectable inhabitants of the town of Poughkeepsie, I hereby authorize you to discharge from custody Daniel Elliott now a prisoner and confined by Military Warrant to the Gaol of sd. County." The document is purportedly signed by Washington at headquarters at New Windsor, Connecticut. As in the Revolutionary pass, both the name of the prisoner and the date vary with each document.
                These release orders represent some of Spring's best work, and even manuscript dealers are occasionally taken in. Several years ago one of these Spring letters to Huntington was offered for sale in a manuscript catalog for $950. The unwary dealer described it as having "slight fading; slight trace of mounting remains at corners. An unusual document; and early form of executive clemency."
                Another of Spring's favorites of which he produced innumerable copies was Washington's exhortation to an army captain (whose name also changes with each document) to "extend your picket across the bridge with a patrol on the Norristown Road as far as the King of Prussia tavern, with orders to bring in all Strangers unable to give a good account of themselves, also all persons found loitering near the lines." The sample of Spring's work which surfaced most frequently during the Washington Papers search for documents, however, is an order supposedly drawn by Washington during the 1790s on the Office of Discount and Deposit in Baltimore. Again, Spring apparently produced these on demand and sold them to credulous Baltimore citizens during his residence in that city.
                Although Spring favored short and pithy documents which did not put too much strain on his orthographic powers, he occasionally produced more ambitious products. His ingenuity sometimes evokes a grudging admiration. While searching in England, the Washington Papers staff acquired from a member of the British peerage a copy of a letter mentioning an ancestor who was Washington's contemporary and with whom Washington frequently corresponded. Unfortunately, the handsome letter which the earl sent to the project was the product of Robert Spring's creativity, probably forged during the period he was peddling Washington and Jackson autographs in England. Undoubtedly a mid-nineteenth century member of the family was delighted to purchase from Spring a letter of so much family interest.
                Several other examples of Spring's more ambitious documents have surfaced. One--of which there are at least four versions known--is a letter to James Wood, dated Philadelphia, 12 September 1796. Copies of this document are owned by the Jervis Library, Oberlin College, Mount Vernon, and the Tennessee State Library and Archives. The Washington Papers staff has never located the original letter actually sent to Wood, but a copy of the letter is recorded in Washington's letter books at the Library of Congress. Either Spring somehow saw this version or, less likely, he had access to the letter actually sent to Wood. A privately owned version of the same letter but addressed to a James Overton has also surfaced. Spring also tried his hand at fabricating copies of Washington addresses. He sold his products for five or ten dollars, only occasionally asking as much as five pounds from some of his English purchasers.
                In the course of collecting Washington manuscripts over a ten-year period, the editors of the Washington Papers have unearthed perhaps 150 examples of Spring's work, but obviously, this is only the tip of the iceberg. Most come from public and university repositories in the United States and Europe, but a large number are also in the possession of private owners. Perhaps less than half of the libraries, and almost none of the private owners, are aware that their Washington document is a Spring forgery. It is not at all uncommon to find Spring documents that have migrated--probably from England--into European repositories. Copies have been acquired by the Washington Papers from sources as far afield as Germany's Kestner Museum.
32. Forged Pass signed by �George Washington.� A Spring forgery.
33. Printed life-sized authentic autograph letter signed by Washington provided as a comparative.
  The Fortsas Hoax (1840)
                 In the summer of 1840, booksellers and collectors throughout Europe received a catalog describing a remarkable book collection which would shortly be sold at auction in a sale to be held on August 10, 1840, in Binche, a small town in the southwest of Belgium. The library of the late, and hitherto-unknown Count Forstas was unique in the annals of book collecting: it consisted entirely of books of which he held the only known copies. If the Count learned of the existence of even one other copy of a book in his collection, that title was immediately purged from his library. At the time of the Count's alleged death in 1839 at the age of sixty-nine, his library numbered fifty-two volumes, all unique copies, and all books which collectors would go to great lengths to possess.
                As the date of the auction drew near, bibliophiles from all over Europe descended upon Binche and quickly sought out the offices of M�itre Mourlon, notary, 9 rue de l'�glise, where the historic sale was scheduled to take place. When they attempted to locate the offices of M�itre Mourlon, however, they could discover no one among the residents of Binche who knew that individual. They also learned that Binche had no street by the name of rue de l'�glise and the late Count himself was unknown to the townspeople.
                The frustrated bibliophiles then discovered, via a broadside which suddenly appeared, that the library of the late Count Forstas would not be auctioned off after all because the town of Binche had acquired the entire collection for its public library. But when the disappointed bibliophiles tried to view the books in their new home, they learned that Binche did not even have a public library. It now became clear to the would-be buyers that they were the victims of a hoax and they left Binche, empty-handed. Eventually they learned the hoax had been planned and executed by Renier Hubert Ghislain Chalon, a retired military officer, who was renowned for his elaborate practical jokes.

The Fortsas Hoax has remained a favorite of bibliophiles since its inception. Following the publication of the scarce

                                    34. James Moran. The Fortsas Hoax: William Blades Translation of the Catalogue. London: Privately Printed, 1961. Facsimile First Edition. With Arborfield Products presentation slip loosely inserted. The first English account in book form of one of the "most successful and amusing literary hoaxes of the nineteenth century" perpetrated by M. Ren� Chalons of Brussels and involving the non-existent library of the equally non-existent Comte de Fortsas "offered for sale" by auction at Binche, Belgium, in 1840. Each spurious, though plausible item was designed to appeal "with peculiar force to the taste of some distinguished collector", many of whom were duped into sending bids, or even attempting to attend "the sale" in person.
35. Rosenwald, Lessing J. The Fortsas Catalogue. North Hill, PA: Bird & Bull Press, 1970. A facsimile. Limited to 250 copies. Facsimile of catalogue in pocket in rear.
36. Klinefelter, Walter. The Fortsas Bibliohoax. Evanston, IL: Ward Schori, 1986. Revised and Newly Annotated. This edition limited to 378 copies.
A Native Son: �Major� George Byron (1824 � 1882)
                 Northeast Pennsylvania�s greatest contribution to literary forgery was Major George Byron who, as a young man, lived on a farm near Wilkes-Barre.
                In the light of his reputation, nothing seemed more natural than that Lord Byron should have fathered and deserted a son. According to "Major George Gordon de Luna Byron," it happened in Spain in 1809, when the fiery poet swept the Countess de Luna off her feet, secretly married her in a Roman Catholic ceremony, then blandly deserted her.
                The major was determined to live as a Byron. He used the arms and motto of the family, impressed the Byron crest on his stationery and silverware. He even made his living by forging Byron letters, and did so well at it that he branched out to include letters guaranteed (by the major) to be from the pens of Keats and Shelley.*
                It is difficult to accurately trace the Major�s career because he left few biographical traces, but even during his lifetime Major Byron couldn't fool everybody every time. When England got too hot, the major lit out for Paris or the U.S. The editor of New York's Evening Mirror sized him up at first glance in 1849: "We turned from him with the natural disgust we feel for humbugs in general, and literary humbugs in particular." When the major sued for libel and lost, he went back to London. Somehow, in 1861 he popped up again in St. Louis in the uniform of a major in the Federal army. Though Major Byron does not show up in War Department records, he was remembered by St. Louis citizens of the time as "modest, unassuming, and highly cultivated, but rather bizarre in manner."
                Major Byron died in New York in 1882, leaving literary experts on two continents with ruffled vanities. Some of his Keats and Shelley forgeries are crude, but the Byron ones are sound. Said a famous London auctioneer to Lord Byron's publisher: "Here are some genuine letters of Byron's, and here are forgeries of them. We must not mix them, for if we do, we shall never be able to separate them."
37. A Partial Autograph Letter Signed, �Byron.� A Byron forgery.
38. Ehrsam, Theodore G. Major Byron: The Incredible Career of a Literary Forger. New York: Boesen & Co., 1951.
  The Love Letters of Abraham Lincoln
                 A young girl had written an admiring letter to Lincoln and Lincoln kindly responded. A forger sometime later concocted a series of poorly forged �love letters� between the two. The girl seemed almost illiterate and Lincoln, usually an impeccable writer, was shown as sloppy and sentimental, even signing his name �Abe,� a nickname he detested. Whether Minor was the forger or merely the dupe, she published the letters to the world, much to her regret.
39. Minor, Frances Wilma. Lincoln the Lover.   'Letters of the Minor Collection Published in the Atlantic Monthly December 1928, January 1929, February 1929, the authenticity of which was immediately challenged.'
40. Bulletin Special Number Published by Lincoln Centennial Association, December 1, 1928, �Atlantic Monthly Lincoln Letters Spurious�
41. Bulletin Second Special Number Published by Lincoln Centennial Association January 1, 1929, "The Atlantic Monthly Hoax Continues" '.
  Thomas James Wise (1859 � 1937)
                 Wise is the poster boy for all studies of forgeries. Until well into the 19^th century, people purchased books more for their content than for their rarity. Around 1870, an interest in collecting books as objects, in particular, first editions became widespread. Quite often, first editions are printed in small quantities as publishers are reluctant to print a work that may not sell. Hence, these editions tend to be scarce. Also around this time, literary societies sprang up. These groups specialized in certain authors such as Keats, Shelley or Byron. As an adjunct to their discussions, they often printed facsimiles of first editions of their authors. Thomas James Wise, a member of most of these societies, took charge of the reprints. It did not take him long to realize that the printing of certain books could be turned into first editions that actually never existed. In other words, he created books with early dates that were never produced. He would take an important work like Sonnets from the Portuguese by Elizabeth Barrett Browning and put a date on it earlier than any other edition thus creating a �first.� All such pamphlets were �privately printed� in small numbers as if commissioned by the authors as gifts for friends and colleagues. Collectors anxious to have first editions snatched these up at high prices.
                Wise became the end-all of book collecting and the world�s foremost authority on first editions. He went on to write some of the best bibliographies of most of the 19^th century authors. They are still used to this day and are known for their accuracy and detail. Unfortunately, to give credence to his forgeries, he included them in his bibliographies; this, the greater sin. His forged first editions were relatively harmless, but the contamination of the historical data made all such books suspect. None of this was discovered until Carter and Pollard noticed that none of the pamphlets were known prior to 1870, none were signed or inscribed and all were in pristine condition. When Wise was questioned, he blamed dead friends and them went into seclusion, his reputation ruined in the London newspapers. He died a broken man in 1937. His wife attempted to buy back the forged booklets after his death as a form of atonement.
42. Wise, Thomas James. Autograph Letter Signed discussing collecting Swinburne. Dated Feb, 16, 1930.
43. [Wise, Thomas J.] [Forman, Harry Buxton.] Horne, Richard Hengist. Galatea Secunda. Melbourne: Privately Printed, 1867. A forged first edition produced by Wise�s future forging partner Harry Buxton Forman. Horne left Australia in 1865 never to return, unbeknownst to Forman. It would then seem ridiculous to privately print a pamphlet for private distribution two years after his departure.
44. [Wise, Thomas J.] [Elizabeth Barrett Browning.] Sonnets by E.B.B. Reading: 1847. The most famous of the Wiseian forgeries, known popularly as the �Reading Sonnets.�
45. [Wise, Thomas J.] Robert Louis Stevenson. Familiar Epistle in Verse and Prose. London: For Private Distribution, 1896. A piracy by the forger.
46. [Wise, Thomas J.] Eliot, George. Agatha. London: Privately Printed, 1869.

47.  [Wise, Thomas J.]  Browning, Robert.  The Statue and the Bust. Pp.22 plus 2 blanks. 8vo., folded and

loose as issued. London, Edward Moxon,1855. Actually forged by T.J. Wise probably around 1903.

48.  [Wise, Thomas J.] Browning, Robert.    Cleon. Pp. 24. 8vo., folded and loose as issued. London, Edward Moxon, 1855. Actually forged by T.J. Wise around 1903.

49.  [Wise, Thomas J.]   Browning, Robert.  Gold Hair: A Legend of Pornic. Pp.16. 8vo., folded and loose as issued. 1864. Actually forged by T.J. Wise around 1899.

50. [Wise, Thomas J.] Browning, Elizabeth Barrett and Robert. Two Poems. London: Chapman & Hall, 1854. Original printed cream wrappers. First Edition. This booklet was printed by Elizabeth's sister, Arabella Barrett, to sell at a charity bazaar held to benefit a refuge for destitute girls; it has been estimated that 300 copies may have been printed. The poems are "A Plea for the Ragged Schools of London" by Elizabeth and "The Twins" by Robert. Four decades later, this booklet played an interesting role in the infamous Thomas Wise / Buxton Forman forgeries: the forgers held that this (genuine) 1854 printing was inspired by the supposedly-1849 Browning booklet "The Runaway Slave" -- when in fact the latter though dated 1849 was printed by the forgers many years later. Ashley Library I p. 110; Wise E.B.B. 15; Tinker 406.
51. [Wise, Thomas J.] Browning, Elisabeth Barrett. The Battle of Marathon. London: For Private Distribution, 1891. With the bookplate of co-conspirator H. Buxton Forman. This was his first foray into facsimile production.
52. [Thomas J. Wise, ed.] Shelley, Percy Bysshe   Hellas: A Lyrical Drama. Published for the Shelley Society. London: Reeves & Turner 196 Strand, 1886.
53. [Thomas J. Wise.] Browning, Robert. Pauline: A Fragment of a Confession. London: Richard Clay & Sons, 1886.
  54. Thomas J. Wise, ed. Shelley, Percy Bysshe. Review of Hogg�s Memoirs of Prince Alexy Haimatoff: Together with an Extract from Some Early Writings of Shelley by Professor E. Dowden LL.D. London: Reeves & Turner, 1886.

55. Shelley, Percy Bysshe. Letters from Percy Bysshe Shelley to Elisabeth Hitchener. Vol. I & II. London: Privately Printed, 1890.
56. Ruskin, John. [Thomas J. Wise, ed.] Letters from John Ruskin to Ernest Chesneau. London: Privately Printed, 1894. A piracy.
57. Wise, Thomas J. and Nicoll Robertson. Literary Anecdotes of the Nineteenth Century. New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1896. A two volume account of the great authors with contrived stories that �prove� the forged pamphlets, in particular, the Reading Sonnets of 1847.
58. Wise, Thomas J. Swinburne, Algernon Charles. Unpublished Verses.,1899.
  59. Carter, John and Graham Pollard. An Enquiry into Certain Nineteenth Century Pamphlets. London: Constable and Company Limited, 1934. First edition. The classic expose of Thomas James Wise, eminent bookman, creator of the Ashley library and past-President of the Bibliographical Society, as a forger. An elegantly written and gripping read. "This book is a fully documented exposure of a group of more than fifty 'first editions' of such prominent authors as Wordsworth, Tennyson, Dickens, Thackeray, the Brownings, Swinburne, George Eliot, William Morris, R. L. Stevenson, and Rudyard Kipling. These items are mostly of the type of the 'privately printed' or 'pre-first' pamphlet genre. They appear in all the standard bibliographies written by Wise as the pre-eminent bibliographer of all time. Yet, in the light of the evidence assembled here, more than thirty of them are shown to be forgeries and the status of the remainder to be open to considerable suspicion. The exposure of the real character of these books introduces scientific methods which had never before been applied to bibliographical problems of this period. The paper has been analyzed under the microscope and its evidence assessed in the light of some original research into the history of paper manufacture. The peculiarities of type have been traced to the printer. The involved story of the establishment of these books in bibliographies and in the rare-book market is patiently examined, almost to the point of obsession. The first and narrative part of the book is divided into two sections: �Deduction� and �Reconstruction:� the second part consists of �Dossiers� for the whole group. In this section, all the relevant details of description, auction record, negative evidence, provenance, bibliographical references, etc., are set out in full, and each dossier is completed by an estimate of suspicion attaching to the book or a final verdict of absolute proof. �These revelations will entail considerable revision among the bibliographies of the authors concerned. The whole story of suspicion, detection and proof gives a vivid picture of a fraud which, for its extent and for the extraordinary skill of its conception and execution, is without a parallel in the history of bibliography and book-collecting." -from the book blurb. Wise might have been forgiven for his creation of spurious �collectibles,� but he included them in his beautifully detailed bibliographies and thereby contaminated the flow of information casting doubt on all such reference volumes.
60. Carter, John & Pollard, Graham. The Firm of Charles Ottley, Landon & Co.: Footnote to an Enquiry. London: Rupert Hart-Davis; New York: Charles Scribner�s Sons, 1948.
61. Carter, John & Pollard, Graham. Precis of Paden or the Sources of the New Timon. Oxford: B.H. Blackwell, 1967. A continuation of An Enquiry.
62. Carter, John & Pollard, Graham. The Mystery of �The Death of Balder.� Oxford: B.H. Blackwell, 1969. A continuation of An Enquiry.
63. Carter, John & Pollard, Graham. Gorfin�s Stock. Oxford: B.H. Blackwell, 1970. A continuation of An Enquiry.
64. [Carter, John & Pollard, Graham.] Wells, Gabriel. The Carter-Pollard Disclosures. New York: Doubleday, Doran & Co., 1934.
65. Partington, Wilfred. Forging Ahead: The True Story of the Upward Progress of Thomas James Wise. Prince of Book Collectors, Bibliographer Extraordinary and otherwise. New York: Putnam�s Sons, 1938.
66. Foxon, D. F. Thomas J. Wise and the Pre-Restoration Drama. London: The Bibliographical Society, 1959.
67. William B. Todd, ed. Thomas J. Wise: Centenary Studies. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1959.
68. [Wise, Thomas J.] Catalogue of the Celebrated Collection of Wiseiana Formed by Sir Maurice Pariser. London: Sotheby�s, 1967.
69. Ratchford, Fannie E. Letters of Thomas J. Wise to John Henry Wrenn: A Further Inquiry into the Guilt of Certain Nineteenth-Century Forgers. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1944.
70. Todd, William B. Suppressed Commentaries on Wiseian Forgeries: Addendum to an Enquiry. Austin: The University of Texas, 1969.
71. [Wise, Thomas J.] Moran, James. Clays of Bungay. Suffolk: Richard Clay & Co. Ltd.,1978. A study of the printer of the Wiseian forgeries.
The Sinking of the Titanic (1912)
                 A large number of books and poems were written very soon after the tragedy at sea on April 12, 1912. There were a great many people interested in the sinking and what scant material survived was highly sought after. In 1997 with the making of the hugely popular James Cameron film �The Titanic,� the collectible material rose geometrically in value. Many bogus pieces of Titanic have �surfaced� and not a few forged �relics.�
72. Autograph Letter Signed by a Titanic Survivor. Written aboard the rescue ship S.S. Carpathia. A forgery. Along with the letter is a Photostat of the Carpathia�s survivor list. Note the last two entries being the letter writer/daughter and her mother provided as provenance for the letter. A forgery.
The Spectra Hoax (1916)
                 Many poets at the time of WWI were disillusioned with the new modernism which seemed overly obtuse, falsely intellectually and appeared to most people to be a hoax on poetry. In fact, several reviewers thought Eliot�s poetry was a hoax! Two poets decided to create a new modernist movement called �Spectrism� and this was their first published work. Many critics admired it as well as a slew of other poets, many of whom submitted their poems in the next Spectrist publication. This parody of Imagist verse and T. S. Eliot by �Anne Knish� (Ficke) and �Emmanuel Morgan� (Bynner) created an uproar and was among the most successful literary hoaxes of the century. Important to this study for the evidence it provides that the methods of the Imagists, including their interests in Japan, had become so pervasive by 1916 that a parody of their work could itself become a successful collection. �It may be noted�, �Anne Knish� writes in the introduction, �that to Spectra, to these reflected experiences of life, as we perceive them, adheres often a tinge of humor. Occidental art, in contrast to the art of the Orient, has until lately been afraid of the flash of humor in its serious works.� The Orientalia in the poems is mainly chinoiserie, but many contain, as well, short stanzas parodying the haiku-inspired verse of Ezra Pound and others.
73. Knish, Anne and Emmanuel Morgan. Spectra: A Book of Poetic Experiments by Anne Knish and Emmanuel Morgan. New York: Kennerly, 1916. First edition signed by both hoaxers.
74. Smith, William Jay. The Spectra Hoax. Achland, OR: Story Line Press, 2000.
The Cottingley Fairies
             An apparently harmless hoax that involved the publications of young girls (Elsie and Frances Gardner)in a woodland setting in England with small winged nymphet fairies sitting in trees, bushes or simply hovering in mid-air around the pretty Alice in Wonderland-like female subjects. While altered photographs were nothing new by the early twentieth century, no one could figure out how the photos were accomplished and they were widely accepted as genuine images of supernatural beings. Arthur Conan Doyle, author of the famous Sherlock Holmes novels was completely taken in by the hoax and wrote a book about the fairies as real beings. So widespread was the belief in fairies that Royal Doulton, one of the most famous porcelain producers in the world, produced a line of pottery known as Fairy Lustreware, extremely collectible and sought after to this day. When forensic examination revealed tiny threads holding up cut-out figures of fairies hung from tree limbs, he became a laughing stock. The girls, who grew up to old age never confessed and always maintained that the fairies were genuine, despite the fact that one of the girls was found to have little paintings of fairies hidden in her wardrobe.

75.  Doyle, Arthur Conan.  The Coming of the Fairies.  New York:  George Doran Co., 1922.  First American Edition. 196 pages, with frontispiece and illustrations. Fairy photo pastedown on front cover, as issued.

76.  Jones, Terry and Brian Froud.  Lady Cottington's Pressed Fairy Book.  New York: Pavillion, 1994.  An extension and obvious knock-off of the Cottingley fairies, this book was a smash hit in 1994 and continues to sell well in various incarnations. This handsome and unusual book is the diary kept by Lady Cottington. Instead of pressing flowers in it, she pressed fairies (with a resulting look remarkably similar to watercolors). Handwritten and handsomely bound, this book is as surprising as it is pleasing. The publisher (at the request of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Fairies) notes that no fairies were injured or killed in the manufacturing process

  The Protocols of the Elders of Zion (1897)

                The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is a forgery made in Russia for the Okhrana (secret police), which blames the Jews for the country's ills. It was first privately printed in 1897 and was made public in 1905. It is copied from a nineteenth century novel by Hermann Goedsche (Biarritz, 1868) and claims that a secret Jewish cabal is plotting to take over the world.
                The basic story was composed by Goedsche, a German novelist and anti-Semite who used the pseudonym of Sir John Retcliffe. Goedsche stole the main story from another writer, Maurice Joly, whose Dialogues in Hell Between Machiavelli and Montesquieu (1864) involved a Hellish plot aimed at opposing Napoleon III. Goedsche's original contribution consists mainly of introducing Jews to do the plotting to take over the world.
                The Russians used big chunks of a Russian translation of Goedsche's novel, published it separately as the Protocols, and claimed they were authentic. Their purpose was political: to strengthen the czar Nicholas II's position by exposing his opponents as allies with those who were part of a massive conspiracy to take over the world. Thus, the Protocols are a forgery of a plagiarized fiction.
                The Protocols were exposed as a forgery by Lucien Wolf in The Jewish Bogey and the Forged Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion (London: Press Committee of the Jewish Board of Deputies, 1919). In 1921, Philip Graves, a correspondent for the London Times, publicized the forgery. Herman Bernstein in The Truth About "The Protocols of Zion": A Complete Exposure (1935) also tried and failed to convince the world of the forgery.
                The Protocols were published in 1920 in a Michigan newspaper started by Henry Ford mainly to attack Jews and Communists. Even after they were exposed as a forgery, Ford's paper continued to cite the document. Adolf Hitler later used the Protocols to help justify his attempt to exterminate Jews during World War II.
                The Protocols hoax continues to fool people and is still cited by certain individuals and groups as the cause of all their woes.
77. The Jewish Peril: Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion. London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1920. First edition in English.
78. Wolf, Lucian. Notes on the Diplomatic History of the Jewish Question with Texts of Protocols, Treaty stipulations and other Public Acts and Official Documents.   London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1919. An Anglo-Jewish publicist and historian, Wolf, who was born in London, the son of a Bohemian political refugee, began writing for newspapers at the age of 17. His first regular employment was with the Jewish World, of which he later became editor (1905-08) His articles in the Fortnightly Review and elsewhere, under the pseudonym "Diplomaticus, " commanded wide attention. From 1890 to 1909 he was foreign editor of the then-influential Daily Graphic. Aroused by the pogroms of 1881, Wolf became extremely interested in Russian affairs, acquired a reputation as an expert in the field, and edited the bulletin Darkest Russia (1912-14) . He was supplied clandestinely with information through a network initiated by Isaac Elhanan Spektor. Wolf's anti-Russian attitude made it difficult for him to continue to work as a foreign correspondent after Great Britain's entry into World War I as Russia's ally. In 1917 he became the secretary of the Joint Foreign Committee (of the Anglo-Jewish Association and the Board of Deputies of British Jews) . As such, he attended the postwar Paris Peace Conference, where he was regarded as a spokesman of "western" Jewry. Although he strongly opposed Jewish nationalism in any form, he was largely responsible for the Minorities Treaties to safeguard the civil and religious rights of Central and East European Jews. Subsequently, he acquired a reputation as an authority on minorities problems at the sessions of the League of Nations at Geneva. Originally an admirer and, to some extent, supporter of Herzl, Wolf later became the principal English spokesman of anti-Zionism, though after 1905 he collaborated with Zangwill in the Jewish Territorial Organization (see Territorialism) . He had early begun research in Anglo-Jewish history, which he continued throughout his life. He wrote the centennial life of Sir Moses Montefiore (1884) , was one of the organizers of the Anglo-Jewish Historical Exhibition of 1887, and founded the Jewish Historical Society of England in 1893 (serving repeatedly as its president) . His principal work was on the "middle period" of Anglo-Jewish history (after the expulsion of 1290) and on the resettlement. His contributions, based almost wholly on original sources, were of primary importance and placed the study of the subject on a new basis. He edited reports of trials of Jewish interest from the Canary Islands Inquisition records and in 1925 prepared a report on the contemporary Marranos of Portugal, a historical contribution of great importance. He contributed a most important article to the 11th edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica on anti-Semitism, on the history of which he was the recognized authority in the English-speaking world. In the non-Jewish sphere he wrote a life of the English statesman Lord Ripon (1921).
Eugene Field II (1887-1944) and Harry Sickles (?)
                 Eugene "Pinny" Field II was the son of the eminent Chicago poet and columnist Eugene Field. Unlike his famous father, Pinny lacked the talent and ambition to make a name for himself in a legitimate field of endeavor. Rather, he sought to get by through exploiting his famous name. Failing that, he would live off the graces of various relativesthat is until he "wore out his welcome."
                Another way Pinny Field sought to raise needed funds was to sell of portions of his father's library, including some of the elder Field's original manuscripts. To aid him in the venture was a shadowy figure in the world of book selling, Harry Dayton Sickles.
                Sickles eschewed the standard methods of selling books in the early part of the 20th Century. He did not operate an open shop or mail order business. Rather, he sold directly to clients, often working out of a hotel room or the trunk of his automobile.
                After Pinny's short supply of genuine material from his father's library ran out, he and Sickles turned to some underhanded tricks to make common merchandise more desirable. They forged signatures of the elder Field and other famous individuals on mundane items to make them attractive to prospective buyers. Those who collect or deal in rare books and autographs have long held the assumption that Pinny Field was the "artist" who was adept at forging the signatures of his famous father and other notaries.
                However, it was. in fact, Harry Sickles who was the forger. It was he who added fake signatures of famous Americans in books, pamphlets, and associated ephemera. These forgeries, filtered through Pinny Field, offering the implication that the book or pamphlet originated in the famous library of Eugene Field, fooled more than one collector.
                Perhaps the most famous batch of forgeries produced by Sickles and Field are those that have become known as the "Coachman Forgeries." In 1931, a national news story reported that one William P. Brown claimed that he had served as a coachman for Mary Lincoln for a time in the years following her husband's assassination. Sickles and Field developed a scheme whereby they could use Brown's moment of fame to lend a note of credibility to their forgeries. The two con artists gathered together a number of period books, pamphlets, and maps for Brown to sign. In all likelihood Brown was an innocent in the game, thinking that the booksellers merely wanted his autograph.
                Sickles and Field then enlisted the aid of a local notary public, Frank E. Thatcher, to add an attestation to the effect that Brown had signed the various publications. The key phrase exploited from Thatcher's notation was "the signature is genuine." No doubt Thatcher intended to authenticate Brown's signature, but Sickles and Field conspired to alter the meaning or implication of the endorsement.
                For after obtaining the signature of Brown and the certified statement, a forged signature of Abraham Lincoln was added. Thus Sickles and Field transformed an innocuous piece of Americana into a relic that may be passed off as having once been owned or signed by Lincoln himself. The statement of William Brown, who claimed to have been a servant of Mary Lincoln, offered outstanding provenance. To top it all off, notary public Frank Thatcher seemingly offered his endorsement that the "signature" (i.e. Lincoln's) was genuine.
                The forgeries fooled, and often continue to fool, many collectors. One famous antiquarian who was at first taken in by the Field/Sickles forgeries, but was later instrumental in exposing the fraud, was Judge James Bollinger. In fact, it was from Bollinger's correspondence files, now on deposit at the University of Iowa, that much of the story has been pieced together.
                In addition to Eugene Field and Abraham Lincoln, Sickles produced forged signatures of Bret Harte, Rudyard Kipling, Frederic Remington, Theodore Roosevelt, Robert Louis Stevenson and Mark Twain.
79. Twain, Mark [Clemens, S. L.] Travels at Home. Selected by Percival Chubb. New York: Harper, 1910. First edition thus. Original green cloth, stamped in green. Very good copy, with a Sickles forgery of Twain's double signature on the title-page, Eugene Field's familiar signed attestation on the rear fly (dated Oct. 20, 1921), and Field's mother's signature on the front end paper: "Julia S. Field." The story of the forgery partnership of Eugene Field and Harry Sickles is now well-known. Less certain is whether Field's mother was an accomplice in the forgeries of her son and his partner (cf. Butts, Absolutely, Mr. Sickles? p. 12ff). The precise date when Field and Sickles began their forgery scam is unknown, but evidence proves they were teamed up as early as February, 1921, making this example a very early one. Field's father died in 1895, but Fields added books to the family library, and his statement in this volume notes it "was an added volume." This forgery is more amusing than most since the book was published the month that Twain died. Twain had spent the last few months of his life in Bermuda, returned home that month by steamer, was carried home, and died a few days later --without signing any autographs for anyone. BAL 3673.
The Oscar Wilde Hoax (1926)
80. Wilde, Oscar. For Love of the King: A Burmese Masque. London: Methuen & Co., 1926. One of 1000 copies printed on handmade paper. Attributed to Oscar Wilde, but not actually written by him; the noted Wilde bibliographer and literary critic Christopher Millard (1872-1927) challenged the publisher's attribution of the play to Wilde and brought suit in 1926. Apparently the play was actually written by Mrs. Chan Toon (nee Mabel Cosgrove), who under the guise of "M. Wodehouse Pearse" had attempted to sell forged letters to Millard. Methuen never reprinted the book. It is still a curious byway in Wilde studies. This copy is pristine -- bound in original white cloth with spine lettered in gold and front cover lettered in gold with gold decorations. Top edges gilt. Printed on handmade paper. Many pages uncut. In dust jacket.
Joseph Cosey (1887 � 1953)
                 Probably one of the most infamous forgers of the early 20th century was Joseph Cosey. His counterfeit documents and signatures of America's most prominent figures were so artfully created that experts had difficulty distinguishing authentic pieces from Cosey forgeries. In fact, many of the documents he forged are believed to be in circulation today, often regarded as genuine. Several of his most famous forgeries were documents allegedly to have been written by Abraham Lincoln.
                Joseph Cosey was born Martin Connelly in February 1887, in Syracuse, New York. Although little is known about his youth, he managed to get into a great deal of trouble with the law starting at a young age. According to an article by Dorothy Twohig, Cosey served as a printer's apprentice before joining the U.S. Army at age 22. However, after serving four years in the army he was dishonorably discharged for assaulting another soldier. The incident was to mark the beginning of a criminal career that would span his adult life.
                To make ends meet after the army, Cosey embarked on a life of thievery. Autograp specialist Charles Hamilton stated that at the age of 25, Cosey was imprisoned for six months for stealing a motorbike. He apparently had given the authorities the pseudonym Joe Hallaway during his arrest so the crime would not be linked to his true identity. Cosey continued to use a series of false names for similar objectives in subsequent arrests years later.
                Between 1914 and 1916, Cosey was convicted several more times. The charges ranged from attempting to cash counterfeit checks to concealing a deadly weapon. His offenses resulted in his eventual imprisonment in California's San Quentin Prison. After serving a sentence of almost 10 years, he was finally paroled in the late 1920s. Unfortunately, prison failed to reform his devious behavior and in 1929 he began a career of forgery.
                The defining moment of Cosey's life was when he visited the Library of Congress and viewed a pay warrant dated from 1786, which was signed by Benjamin Franklin. He promptly stole the valuable object and spent days practicing Franklin's famous autograph and writing style. He became so adept at forging that he sold a series of his own handmade replicas to unsuspecting history buffs, collectors and manuscript dealers, usually for insignificant sums.
                Cosey continued to profit by forging other historical figures' writing styles and signatures. In fact, his technique of emulating the script of famous personalities became so sophisticated, that it was difficult for handwriting experts to detect authentic documents from Cosey's imitations. Nonetheless, though it was a precarious source of revenue, it proved to be highly lucrative.
                In addition to his Benjamin Franklin forgeries, Cosey also forged some of the most convincing Edgar Allan Poe material. He was adept at the signatures of numerous American legends, including John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Monroe, Button Gwinnett, Patrick Henry, George Washington, and Abraham Lincoln. He also forged documents and signatures of other greats, including Mark Twain (Samuel L. Clemens), Walt Whitman, Theodore Roosevelt and Rudyard Kipling.
                Hamilton stated that Cosey often "whipped out his forgeries with great ease, never resorting to the amateur device of tracery." Yet, even though it was relatively easy for him to produce counterfeit signatures and documents, much of his success was attributed to the distinctive writing materials he used. Cosey was known to work with antiquated paper, dated writing implements and a specific brand of brown ink that was commonly used during the 18th century. Thus, his finished products were extraordinarily convincing.
Cosey was by all means a creative manufacturer of forgeries, yet not all of his reproductions and fabrications went unobserved. Some of the more skilled experts were able to find inaccuracies in his work. Those critical errors, which made Cosey's forgeries distinguishable from authentic historical manuscripts, eventually landed him in more legal trouble.
                According to Hamilton, Cosey used a "timeless" style when forging; failing to recognize that writing ability decreases with age and usually becomes unsteady. Thus, many of his forgeries retained "an eternal youth" even though the subject of his forgeries should have been old and shaky at the time the document was supposed to have been written. Moreover, instead of always using real antiquated paper, Cosey treated contemporary paper with chemicals to give it an aged appearance. Hamilton further believes that there was evidence that Cosey used a pen with a steel "nib" when forging, which was not yet invented at the time many of the documents were alleged to have been drawn up.
                Cosey made even more recognizable mistakes when he forged. For example, when comparing Abraham Lincoln's signature with Cosey's forgery, one can see a variation in writing technique. Hamilton noted that Cosey's counterfeit was written on "the same plane," whereas Lincoln's actual signature was written in a stepped-like fashion.
                Cosey's luck with passing falsified documents was short-lived. In January 1937 he was arrested for selling a letter allegedly written by Lincoln to a stamp dealer. The document was labeled a fake after analysis confirmed that the authentic signature of Abraham Lincoln did not coincide with that in the forged document. After admitting his guilt, Cosey was sentenced to three years in prison. However, he was paroled after serving a little less than a year.
                Following his release, Cosey continued to forge a living making counterfeit documents until his death in the early 1950's. To date, many of his documents are still in circulation and have gone undetected as fakes. Those documents that have been exposed as Cosey fabrications are considered highly valued and sought by collectors who appreciate the forger's unique genius.
79A. [Poe, Edgar Allan.] Autograph Manuscript of the First Page of �The Black Cat.� A Cosey forgery.
   Henry Woodhouse (1884 � 1970)
                 Henry Woodhouse was born Mario Terenzio Enrico on June 24, 1884, in Turin, Italy, to Lodovico and Garino Casalengo. Little is known about Henry's early childhood, except that he was extremely bright and motivated. During his school years, he displayed a great interest in science, language and culture. He was also an adventurous boy with big plans for the future. There was little doubt that he would one day fulfill his dreams of moving to America and making it big.
                At age 21, Henry's dream was partly realized when he moved to America. However, he was far from being a success. To make ends meet, he took a job working in a restaurant kitchen. It was hard work with little pay, but he knew he had to begin somewhere.
                Just a few months into his job a horrible incident occurred that haunted Henry throughout his adulthood and jeopardize his reputation. While working in the kitchen, a co-worker began an argument with the Italian immigrant. According to an essay by Jerry Kuntz, the co-worker allegedly lunged at Henry who had been holding a knife in his hand. Within seconds the man fell to the floor dead. It was suggested that he had accidentally impaled himself on Henry's knife.
                The story of the "alleged" accidental death sounded suspicious to the police who arrested Henry. Following a brief trial, Henry was found guilty and sentenced to four years in New York's Clinton Prison. Henry was released in 1909.
                Not long after his release he changed his name from Mario Terenzio Enrico Casalengo to the direct English translation, Henry Woodhouse. It was believed he did this because to hide the manslaughter conviction.
                It didn't take Henry long to fully realize his dreams. In 1910, he discovered a passion for aviation and began to write articles in magazines about his newfound interest. Over the years, he authored many articles and books on the subject and became known as an expert in the field.
                With the help of some wealthy friends, Henry established a magazine known as Flying that became a commercial success. Before long, his career also began to take flight. Kuntz stated that Henry founded several other magazines including a weekly newsletter titled Naval Aeronautics, Air Power and Scientific Age. Henry also contributed to the field of aviation by writing several books and founding the American Society of Aeronautic Engineering in 1915.
                Henry began to reap the financial benefits from his business and publication successes, and his lifestyle drastically changed. He was no longer the poor Italian immigrant with a prison record, but a distinguished and successful businessman with connections and a talent for wheeling and dealing. Although Henry profited greatly from his aviation publications, he made most of his fortune in real estate.
                Henry was proud of his accomplishments and made no effort to hide it. He was often heard saying that he was "working on a million-dollar deal." He would also brag about the many famous personalities he befriended throughout his career, including Teddy Roosevelt, Amelia Earhart, Charles Lindbergh, Orville Wright, Woodrow Wilson, and Arctic explorers Robert E. Peary, Richard Byrd and Ronald Amundsen, as well as a great many other celebrities of the time.
                During the late 1920s and 1930s, Henry found a new passion: collecting. He collected mostly unusual artifacts, antiques, signatures of great American heroes and rare historical documents. Unfortunately, many of the signatures and documents he collected were not genuine, but actually Henry's own creations. In fact, he was likely a compulsive forger, often falsifying the writing style and names of his famous friends in documents, letters and in books. He became close friends with Charles Dickens� granddaughter and used his affiliation with her to sell forgeries.
                Henry was a prolific forger and had a special interest in reproducing and creating documents purportedly written by historical figures. Some of his works included forged documents of George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and many of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. Although he was able to produce enormous quantities of fraudulent works, he was by no means the most highly skilled forger of his time.
                Henry's lack of skill is clear in many of the documents he passed off as authentic, especially those purportedly written by Lincoln. Yet they were able to fool many collectors and prospective buyers from whom he profited. However, upon close inspection, experts were able to see that the works allegedly from Lincoln were obvious fakes.
                When comparing Henry's forged Lincoln signature to Lincoln's original autograph there are several critical errors noticeable. Henry wrote in a light and somewhat shaky hand, as if he was unsure or overly conscious of making mistakes. It even appeared at times as if he traced the signature from a copy of the original version. Conversely, Lincoln's signature was often written boldly and in a steady hand. Moreover, in the forgery there were distinct stylistic differences in writing, especially when comparing certain letters like the capital "L" in Lincoln.
                Henry may not have been the most adept forger, but it was something he clearly enjoyed doing. It was also a means to make more money from unsuspecting buyers. Interestingly, he never was convicted of his criminal activities and was able to pursue his unusual hobby throughout most of his life.
                It was, in fact, Henry's past that caused him the most trouble. It eventually caught up with him when details of the killing became public knowledge and severely hampered his career and reputation. As a result, he lost a great many of his friends and his magazine profits plummeted. He never was able to regain his social stature and he died a lonely man in January 1970, at the age of 86.
81. Autograph Letter Signed from �A. Lincoln.� A Woodhouse forgery.
82. Auction Catalogue: Historical Autographs from the Collection of Henry Woodhouse of New York Sold by His Order. March 30,1931. New York: American Art Association & Anderson Galleries. A catalogue of genuine and forged items owned by the forger.

83. Dickens, Charles. The Chimes: A Goblin Story. New York: The Historic Arts Association, 1938. Signed by forger Henry Woodhouse and Dickens� granddaughter, Enid Dickens Hawksley.

  �The Migrant Mother� by Dorothea Lange (1936)
                 Few photographs have so filled the imagination of viewers than Lange�s black and white portrait of a poor woman with hungry children, the faraway look in her eyes, the worried expression, the noble brow. Lange received all sorts of kudos for her inspiring �candid� shots of depression-era downtrodden Americans and this was her most iconic. Lange carried her photographic gear around the countryside in a large stationwagon. Her gear was a heavy wooden tripod that supported a large bellowed portrait camera that used either silver plates or bracketed film. In short, catching anything candid would be akin to pointing your telescope at the sky and accidentally seeing the collision of two stars. Lange would have had to stop, unload her gear, set up, run a light test all, theoretically, while the woman and her three waifs sat in this �candid� position with Lange about six feet away. Perhaps Dorothea simply took twenty minutes or so to set up in front of the bedraggled mother and filthy children (there were nine, according to Lange�s memoir) in her dirty tent and unassumingly waited for the tragic pose to assemble and then, click!     It�s easy to imagine the successful Lange with car and assistant and equipment worth more than the Migrant Mother could earn in two years saying casually, �now don�t you pay any attention to me. Just do your suffering thing like I�m not even here.�
                In a similar vein the photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt produced an even more recognized photograph, not in this exhibit: The sailor kissing the girl in Times Square when victory over Japan was announced in August 1945. In fact, that photo was snapped on July 4^th of that year, six weeks before V-J day. Eisenstaedt was in New York City and saw the sailor on leave with his wife emerging from the subway. He posed them and shot the photo in anticipation of the victory. The photographer revealed the truth many years later after someone attempted to re-enact the kiss for the cameras claiming they were the actual couple. See, Ruthven, K.K. Faking Literature. Cambridge, UK: University Press, 2001.
84. Photographic Reproduction of �The Migrant Mother.�
  Charles Weisberg (? � 1945)
                 Charles Weisberg, also known as "The Baron" was brought to public attention in the mid 1930's after he was charged with mail fraud in Pennsylvania for trying to sell forged documents and autographs through the postal service. Some of the forgeries he attempted to sell included a series of falsified signatures purportedly that of actress Jane Mansfield, as well as forged Stephen Collins Foster, Francis Hopkinson and Walt Whitman letters and manuscripts. However, he also sold documents via the mail that were alleged to be original works by George Washington and Abraham Lincoln.
                What distinguished Weisberg's Lincoln forgeries from others was that he was quite adept at replicating the writing style and signature of the famous president. Moreover, he would at times use preexisting letters from the Civil War era, on which he would write a forged extension to the document purportedly composed by Lincoln. On first inspection, one might believe that the documents were genuine articles. Yet, as experts analyzed the documents more closely they discovered several critical errors that raised doubt as to their authenticity.
                According to an article by Lita Solis-Cohen, one of the errors Weisberg made in his Lincoln forgeries was that his letters were, "long and involved," whereas Lincoln's actual letters were usually brief and to the point. Furthermore, Hamilton pointed out that Lincoln "almost never wrote notes at the bottom of letters or documents, but preferred to fold them three or four times, then write at the top of the center section of the fold." Weisberg's supposed "original" documents were also judged as fakes when it was discovered that the ink used was not from the Civil War period, but actually a modern formula.
                The inaccuracies found in Weisberg's documents eventually exposed him as a forger. He was arrested on several occasions and served two back-to-back prison sentences during the 1940s. During his last jail term in 1945, Weisberg died of natural causes in Pennsylvania's Lewisburg Prison. After his death he earned the reputation as one of the most-skilled Lincoln forgers in history.

85. Autograph Letter Signed by �Walt Whitman.� A Weisberg forgery.

The Ern Malley Hoax (1945)

                For the editors of an avant-garde magazine devoted to the cause of modernism in Australia, Ernest Lalor Malley was a godsend: young, highly talented and, an added bonus, dead.
                His sister, Ethel, sent The Darkening Ecliptic to the editors of Angry Penguins after her brother�s death, who published it in the Autumn 1944 issue.
                But the poet, his sister and his poems were the inventions of James McAuley and Harold Stewart, two conservative poets who disliked modernist poetry. They had written Malley�s collection in a single afternoon in October 1943; a melange of the works of Shakespeare, several dictionaries and a report from the United States on mosquito breeding grounds.
                On 25 June 1944, the Sydney Sun exposed the hoax. The story circled the world, the popular press revelling in the chance to ridicule the literary pretensions of the modernists.Harris always maintained Malley was a genius (indeed, several consider McAuley and Stewart�s hoax better than anything they published under their own names).
86. Harris, Max. Ern Malley's Poems. Melbourne: Landsdowne Press, 1944 (1961). Introduction by Max Harris, the protagonists, appendix. Buff coloured card boards, with stapled spine. Some minor discoloration to the book edges. Browning and rubbing marks to the top paper edge and slight bumping to the top and bottom book edges. Plain text dustwrapper, with olive green decoration and buff and black coloured writing on front panel and black on spine. Dustwrapper is discolored, particularly near spine. Some brown marks to front and back panel along with some grubby marks. "Among the honored ranks of Australian poets is one never actually existed -- Ern Malley." This 1961 reprint of the Ern Malley poems was the first printing in Australia since 1944 when Harold Stewart and James McAuley owned up to the authorship of poems and caused a huge furore in the Australian arts community.
  87. Malley, Ern. The Darkening Ecliptic. Uxbridge, UK: Privately printed by R. Alistair McAlpine, N.d. One of 1000 copies. Illustrated by Sidney Nolan. Portrait of the fictitious Ern Malley on inside covers.
  88. Harris, Max and John Reed. Angry Penguins. 1944 Autumn Number. With illustrations plus printed wrappers illustrated in color by Sidney Nolan. Featuring prominently the poetry of Ern Malley.
89. Heyward, Michael. The Ern Malley Affair. London: Faber & Faber, 1993.
90. Photostat of an Autograph Letter Signed by Ethel Malley, the purported sister of the deceased Ern This is the letter that started the hoax.
A Catalogue of Original Artwork by Aubrey Beardsley (1943)
A wealthy collector had been duped into buying a large quantity of previously uupublished artwork by the very popular and collectible Aubrey Beardsley. When Nichols discovered he was duped, he self-published the lavish catalogue to give credence and salability to his collection. It failed.
91. Nichols, H.S. Fifty Drawings By Aubrey Beardsley Selected from the collection of H. S. Nichols. One of 500 numbered [#472] copies signed by the publisher. Bound in black cloth with gilt decoration to the front board and the spine. The collection is unique in that all of the 'Beardsly' drawings within it are forgeries.
In a similar vein:
92. Norman, Geraldine. The Tom Keating Catalogue. London: Hutchinson Co., 1977. Another catalogue of art forgeries.

The Vinland Map (1957)

                This is a map allegedly drawn by a 15^th scribe showing the North American continent fifty years before Columbus� journey. Its possible importance and value reside in the depiction of a curious island named 'Vinland' on the western edge of the map, for this lies where North America appears on modern charts. Text nearby makes an astonishing claim: that two Viking sailors found their way to Vinland almost 500 years before Christopher Columbus, the explorer that history books credit with the discovery of the New World.
                Some experts believe that the map was drawn in around 1440, and that the information it contains was passed down from Viking adventurers who had made landfall in Vinland. Others claim that the map is a hoax, forged in modern times.
                The map is owned by Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut in the US and is kept in the Beinecke Library there. Pictures of it are posted on the website hosted by Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, New York � a scientist from there helped to carry out the carbon-dating of the map.
Could the Vinland Map have been based on information gathered by Viking seafarers? Kirsten A. Seaver's fascinating and highly readable book The Frozen Echo: Greenland and the Exploration of North America, c AD 1000-1500 (Stanford University Press, 1998) tells the story of the Viking voyages to North America.        At around the time that the Vinland map was first launched publicly in 1965, Norwegian archaeologists Helge and Anne Stine Ingstad announced that they had discovered the remains of a Viking settlement at L'Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland in Canada..
                While the Ingstads' discovery has left no room for doubt that the Vikings did arrive in America prior to Columbus by around 500 years, no evidence has been found to suggest that these Norse seafarers used or drew maps. So is the Vinland map a cunning hoax? Those who believe it is, ask why nothing seems to be known about what happened to it between the date of its apparent creation � around 1440 � and 1957, when it was shown to experts at the British Museum.
                Yale acquired the Vinland Map in 1957 from the noted American manuscript dealer Laurence C Witten II, who, in turn, had bought it from an Italian dealer, Enzo Ferrajoli. Witten's account of the deal and its consequences can be read in the second edition of a lavish book published by Yale University Press in 1996: The Vinland Map and the Tartar Relation by R A Skelton, Thomas E Marston and George D Painter. The first edition was issued to coincide with Yale's 1965 announcement that it had acquired the map. Both books contain essays supporting the authenticity of the manuscript, while the second, revised edition acknowledges the doubts voiced by some experts.
                In an article 'Vinland Re-read', published in 1998, Paul Saenger of the Newberry Library in Chicago, an authority on medieval books, points out the inconsistencies in Witten's recollections and raises other reasons to be skeptical.
                Frustrated by the map's lack of a provenance, both doubters and believers tried a different tack: they wanted to see if science could solve the mystery of the map.
                The map's supporters have taken heart from the findings of a team based at the University of Arizona who, in 1995, were allowed to cut a small sliver of parchment from it for radiocarbon dating. Their finding, published in Radiocarbon 2002 44 45-52, was impressively precise: the parchment on which the Vinland Map was drawn was made during the period 1423-1445 (that is, 1434 � 11 years) � about 50 years or more before Columbus's voyage and approximately the date (1440) that Yale's experts had suggested. The doubters counter this by claiming that a forger could simply have taken two blank pages from a genuine medieval work and drawn on them.
                Tests on the ink, however, have proved highly contentious. As long ago as 1967, an investigator at the British Museum noticed that there was something odd about the ink when it was placed under ultra-violet light. But it was Dr Walter McCrone, a world-famous expert on analysing the tiniest of particles, whose findings in the 1970s launched the Great Ink Controversy that has raged, unabated, for some 30 years.
                McCrone claimed that the ink contained anatase, a form of titanium dioxide that occurs naturally as a mineral ore. The problem (for the believers) was that McCrone also argued that the particles of anatase on the map were not the jagged, irregular ones that are found in nature, but the rounded particles, all of a similar size, that denote the synthetic version. And synthetic anatase was not invented until the 20th century
                In the 1980s, believers took new hope from a study conducted by a team headed by Professor Tom Cahill at the University of California, Davis. Cahill had used a cyclotron to calculate how much of each element can be found in ancient inks. The results opened up the possibility that the Vinland Map might be genuine after all, for Cahill's team found hardly any anatase on the map.
                Yet another analysis of the ink, using yet another technique, swung the argument back into the sceptics' favour in 2002. Then, Dr Katherine Brown and Professor Robin Clark of University College London announced that they, too, had found industrial anatase on the map. Professor Clark added, 'It was deliberately placed as part of the ink. We can see no option but that this must be a modern 20th-century forgery.'
93. Skelton, R.A., Thomas E. Marston, and George D. Painter. The Vinland Map and the Tartar Relation. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press: 1965. First publication of Latin manuscript by 13th century friar, with maps, of his account of explorations linking the Mongolian invasion of Europe with the Norse explorations in North America.
94. Skelton, R.A., Thomas E. Marston, and George D. Painter. The Vinland Map and the Tartar Relation. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press: 1995. Updated edition with new scientific analysis indicating its authenticity.
95. Seaver, Kirsten A. Maps, Myths, and Men: The Story of the Vinland Map. Stanford: University Press, 2004. The latest compilation of data indicating that the map is a forgery.
THE C.S. LEWIS HOAX (1963)
                 The chief proponent of a claim that some of C.S Lewis�s works have been forged is Kathryn Lindskoog. She claims that an editor, Walter Hooper, perpetrated a series of forgeries intended at the least, to show Lewis as a closet homosexual. She first expressed concern about Mr. Hooper in her 1978 paper "Some Questions in C.S. Lewis Scholarship" in the journal Christianity and Literature. She argued that Mr. Hooper had circulated misleading stories about the duration and extent of his contact with the author, that he acquired unpublished manuscripts through suspicious means, and that his editions of certain Lewis writings had taken liberties with the original text. Through a steady flow of articles and books, Ms. Lindskoog has expanded the bill of complaints considerably. She now argues that the posthumous Lewis canon includes spurious works, which may be recognized by what she calls their "un-Lewisian" style and content. Ms. Lindskoog also contends that Mr. Hooper has abused his position to plant homoerotic insinuations in editions of Lewis's work.
                Supporters portray Ms. Lindskoog as a scholarly David, armed with little more than a keyboard and her close knowledge of Lewis's work, fighting to bring down a Goliath of international corporate power. That imagery of mismatched combatants is reinforced by reference to Ms. Lindskoog's physical condition. She has multiple sclerosis and requires 24-hour medical care. The disease at times leaves her almost completely paralyzed, forcing her to write on her back with a keyboard propped above her.
Even her toughest critics marvel at her ability to keep writing, in extraordinarily trying circumstances. But they also say that Ms. Lindskoog is prone to attributing intellectual dishonesty and low motivation to other Lewisians. Her approach to judging evidence does not always win high marks, either. Granted, the difference between gossip and literary history is sometimes one generation. But few scholars would begin a footnote, as Ms. Lindskoog does, with the phrase "Rumor has it ..."
                C.S. Lewis fans will be familiar with the controversy surrounding his posthumously published work, some of which may or may not have been forged. Public awareness of the controversy is in large part due to Kathryn Lindskoog, who has been investigating and publicizing the alleged fraud since 1988 (The C.S. Lewis Hoax). Because Lewis is and always has been enormously popular in children's literature (because of The Chronicles of Narnia) and Christian evangelism (because of his many religious writings), this dispute over the posthumous work is no obscure battle over scholarly authenticity: at stake are merchandising rights, tourism and an endless stream of publishing revenue. According to Lindskoog, members of the Lewis estate have exploited his legacy in ways ranging from the unethical to the outright unlawful most outrageously, concocting and publishing a "new" C.S. Lewis novel, The Dark Tower. Her fiercest attack is reserved for co-trustee of the estate and leading editor Walter Hooper, whom she paints as a forger and a fabricator of the first order. Unfortunately, Lindskoog often undermines her own argument by adducing flimsy evidence and speculation. Nevertheless, she makes a powerful case that something fishy is going on in the affairs of C.S. Lewis. Not every reader will want to battle through her lengthy and often hyperbolic case, but those who care about C.S. Lewis will find this book indispensable in making up their own minds.
                Sleuthing C. S. Lewis is the latest installment in the story of the most bizarre literary and religious scandal of the late twentieth century. Within a few months of C. S. Lewis's death in 1963, certain facts about his life were already being fictionalized and his literary leavings were being contaminated with fakery. This was the beginning of one of the most audacious literary hoaxes on record, and it's still going on today.
                Year after year, the fraud has been promoted by public relations and protected by secrecy. Year after year, Lindskoog has explored the fraud farther. The result is a gripping tale with an amazing cast of characters and new developments every year. This is scholarship packed with human interest and suspense.
The controversy is not only an excursion into realms of forgery, imposture, and cover-up, but also an insightful excursion into little-known aspects of C. S. Lewis's life. It offers rare glimpses of Lewis from his teens to his final day, and it uncovers important facts about his beloved brother Warren.
                C. S. Lewis on Kathryn Lindskoog: In 1957 C. S. Lewis sent a letter to Kathryn Lindskoog in which he included this unique commendation: "You are in the centre of the target everywhere. For one thing, you know my work better than anyone else I�ve met; certainly better than I do myself� But secondly, you (alone of the critics I've met) realize the connection, or even the unity, of all the books�scholarly, fantastic, theological�and make me appear a single author, not a man who impersonates half a dozen authors, which is what I seem to most. This wins really very high marks indeed� If you understand me so well you will understand other authors too. I hope we shall have some really useful critical works from your hand."
            Perhaps her most serious charge against Hooper is the characterization of Lewis as a sadist�with lurid portions of letters Lewis sent to Arthur Greeves (a homosexual) where he speaks of his secret desires to �whip and flagellate� restored (by Hooper) from �crossed-out� portions of letters to Greeves. The novella, The Dark Tower, Lindskoog insists, is a veiled homosexual novel incorporating Lewis�s latent homosexuality and his sadism. The most convincing evidence of Hooper�s characterization of Lewis as a �pervert,� is the fact that Hooper never sued Lindskoog for libel. Considering that her books openly call him an imposter, a thief, and a forger, it would seem that Hooper�s failure to seek legal redress is quite convincing that everything that Lindskoog states is true.
96. Lewis, C.S. The Dark Tower and Other Stories. With a Preface and Notes by Walter Hooper. London: Collins, 1977. First edition of the title novella. Claimed to be a pure forgery and fabrication of Walter Hooper.
97. Lewis, C.S. The Dark Tower and Other Stories. With a Preface and Notes by Walter Hooper. San Diego: Harcourt, 1977. American paperback edition currently for sale everywhere with no recognition of the forgery.
98. Hooper, Walter, ed. They Stand Together: The Letters of C. S. Lewis to Arthur Greeves (1914-1963). New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc., London: Collins, 1979. First edition with the �homoerotic cover design that was abandoned in subsequent editions after Lindskoog�s expose. This collection of letters has many redacted sentences re-instated (by the homosexual Hooper), showing Lewis as a sadist and homosexual.
99. Hooper, Walter, ed. They Stand Together: The Letters of C. S. Lewis to Arthur Greeves (1914-1963). New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc., 1979. First American Edition with altered cover.
100. Lindskoog, Kathryn. The C. S. Lewis Hoax. Portland, OR: The Multnomah Press, 1988.
101. Lindskoog, Kathryn. Sleuthing C.S. Lewis: More Light in the Shadowlands. Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2001.
Fredric Prokosch and The Butterfly Books (1968)
                 Frederic Prokosch is remembered today primarily as the author of a number of well-received novels and as a minor poet of some note. What is less well known is that he was also an accomplished forger. Frederic Prokosch was born in Madison, Wisconsin in 1906. His father, an Austrian �migr�, was a linguist who had a distinguished academic career in the United States. Frederic Prokosch seemed destined for a scholarly career himself. After graduating from Haverford College, he entered Yale and received his doctorate in literature in 1932. While at Haverford, Prokosch began writing poetry and saw his poems published in some of the best-known literary magazines of the time. By the mid-1930s, Prokosch was also experimenting with fiction. His novel The Asiatics was published to critical acclaim in 1935, as was The Seven Who Fled which appeared in 1937. Prokosch went on to produce sixteen novels, several collections of poetry and translations, and an autobiography during his lengthy career.
                Prokosch was an avid reader and collector of contemporary literature and had begun corresponding with some of the most prominent authors of his time, including W.H. Auden, T.S. Eliot, Robinson Jeffers, and Stephen Spender. Prokosch also developed a keen interest in the printing and design of books. In the early 1930s he started producing small, hand-printed editions of his own writing, as well as work by authors he admired, including those noted above. He began sending copies of these books to their authors as Christmas presents and they were usually well received. Prokosch continued this practice from roughly 1932-1960 and produced more than fifty different pamphlets printing his own poetry and that of others. Although known to booksellers and collectors, they were quite scarce and seldom came on the antiquarian market.
                In 1968, Frederic Prokosch arranged for the sale of his literary archives, ironically, at the instigation of John Carter, who was representing Sotheby's at the time. Included with the archive was a set of his privately-printed pamphlets. The archive and the pamphlets sold at auction and Prokosch also agreed to sell duplicate copies of his pamphlets. For the next several years, small groups of these pamphlets--which were known in the trade as the butterfly books because of their small size and brightly-decorated marbled wrappers and the fact that Prokosch was an avid butterfly collector who modeled his pamphlets after their wing patterns--were sold at auction. In May 1972, Sotheby's held an auction at which a complete set of the Prokosch pamphlets were sold to Quaritch, Ltd.
                Shortly after the sale, Arthur Freeman of Quaritch began to have suspicions about the authenticity of the pamphlets. He called in Nicolas Barker, the noted bibliographer, historian of the book, and co-author of a sequel to Carter's and Pollard's Enquirs. Barker launched an extensive investigation and proved conclusively that the pamphlets had been printed long after their alleged imprint dates and Prokosch, when presented with the evidence, admitted to the forgeries. Between 1968 and 1970, Prokosch hired a Paris printer to print additional titles in small editions with false imprints. When questioned about the forged pamphlets, Prokosch, who was clearly embarrassed by his action, characterized it as a prank. Still, unlike his predecessor Thomas J. Wise, he confessed to the forgeries and managed to survive this indiscretion with his reputation largely intact. At the time of his death in 1989, his career as a forger was relatively unknown to all but the specialist scholar or bibliophile.
102. MacLeish, Archibald. The Snow Fall. Privately Printed, 1933. An unrecorded, previously unknown copy of a Butterfly book.
103. A Collection of Butterfly Books.
104. Autograph Letter Signed from Prokosch to Wiseian sleuth John Carter, stating that the forged early editions he created were too obvious for any person to have considered them genuine.
105. Barker, Nicholas. The Butterfly Books. Bertram Rota,, London, 1987. First Edition. A methodical, detailed expose of Frederic Prokosch's printed forgeries which copies (mimics) the format, tone and style of the Carter-Pollard investigation of Wise. Laid in is an autograph letter of the author.
  Texas Forged Documents (1972)
                 In 1972, three Texas rare book dealers conspired to steal famous and important Texas historical documents, photographing them and reprinting them. Most notably, C. Dorman David, a president of The Antiquarian Booksellers Association of America was the ringleader.
106. Austin, W. Thomas Taylor, 1991. Texfake. An account of the theft and forgery of early Texas printed documents. With an introduction by Larry McMurtry. With illustrations. Fascinating account with all the details of the forgery on a large scale of the Texas Declaration of Independence and other notable Texania. These were sold to institutions and collectors on quite a scale before it was discovered that they were faked. The work contains details on forged and genuine copies. This copy from the important and recently dispersed collection of Frederick Adams with his bookplate. With the promotional flyer for the book with Adams� notations.
Clifford Irving (1930 - )

                In the last part of his life, when he began to buy into Las Vegas and surround himself by what the press called "the Mormon Mafia," Hughes became outspoken and profoundly eccentric, a will-o'-the- wisp who vanished from sight for months at a time. He was reputed to be so fearful of germs that he walked around in Kleenex boxes instead of shoes. In seclusion, it was said, he had grown eight-inch fingernails and toenails.
                When a California court levied a judgment of $137 million for his refusal to appear to defend against a stockholders' lawsuit, Hughes abandoned his industrial empire, fled from the USA, and went into hiding on Paradise Island in the Bahamas.
                Now, the McGraw-Hill Book Co. claimed, Hughes had struck a deal with writer Clifford Irving, an expatriate novelist living on the Mediterranean island of Ibiza. The hitherto reclusive billionaire had met clandestinely with Irving in Mexico and the Bahamas, in order to tell the 40-year-old author the true story of his life. It was a no-holds-barred autobiography, "warts and all," from a living legend who was dying and wanted to set the record straight. First reports hinted that it told of Hughes' manipulation of the stock market, his bribery of American presidents, his secret wartime combat mission under the aegis of President Roosevelt, his friendships with Cary Grant and Ernest Hemingway, his behind-locked-doors life in Las Vegas�and it revealed details of affairs with movie stars from Katharine Hepburn to Ava Gardner. It disclosed a secret love with the European wife of a member of the diplomatic corps.
                McGraw-Hill's announcement of the impending publication ignited a firestorm of controversy. Everyone was surprised �many were upset�a few panicked. Executives of Hughes' corporations insisted the book was unauthorized. Finally, on a national radio hookup, an invisible Howard Hughes spoke from his darkened hotel suite on Paradise Island. "This must go down in history," he said. "I only wish I were still in the movie business, because I don't remember any script as wild or as stretching the imagination as this yarn has turned out to be. I don't know what's in [the autobiography]. I don't know [Clifford Irving]."
                McGraw-Hill, Irving, and Life, which had bought serialization rights, were not fazed by the denials. Clutching a bulky manuscript annotated with hundreds of Hughes' alleged handwritten comments, the author appeared on 60 Minutes after the 1972 Super Bowl to tell Mike Wallace: "For better or for worse, I think I know Howard better than any man alive. The autobiography is genuine."
                Mike Wallace had read the manuscript; he believed that Irving was telling the truth.
For months the debate was front-page news, often eclipsing the Vietnam War. Publishers Weekly quoted a McGraw-Hill spokesperson: "No one who has read [the autobiography] can doubt its integrity." Some said that revelatory material in the book might topple the Republican administration. Albert Leventhal, editor-in-chief of McGraw-Hill, chiding the idea that the autobiography was not authentic, announced that "We who have had the privilege of reading the manuscript know that it would take a Shakespeare to invent such a work."
                Veteran Time reporter Frank McCulloch said, "I've covered Howard Hughes for twenty years, and having read the autobiography there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that it could only have come from him. Howard has to deny its authenticity because his lawyers have told him he's gone too far in his revelations about the Nixon bribes."
                As a final test to determine authenticity, leading handwriting experts in the United States scrutinized the documentation and matched it against samples provided by Hughes' lawyers themselves. Their conclusion: the signatures were those of Howard Hughes, and "the chances are one in ten million that these many handwritten pages from Hughes to Irving and McGraw-Hill are not genuine. It would be beyond human capability to forge this mass of material."
                The book was to have an unprecedented first printing of 400,000 copies. Book-of-the-Month Club paid their highest price in history for the publishing rights. Yet, by the end of January 1972 Clifford Irving did an about-face, stunning his army of supporters with a confession that the autobiography was a hoax. His Swiss wife, Edith, had traveled under the false passport of Helga Hughes to cash the publisher's checks in Zurich. "I never met Howard Hughes," Irving now said. "It was a caper, nothing more." The book had resulted from a combination of careful research and daring imagination; when he wrote it, he was off traveling in Mexico with his mistress, Danish baroness and singer Nina van Pallandt, who later betrayed him to the U.S. authorities.
                Amid massive worldwide publicity, Irving was sentenced to 2 1/2 years in federal prison only two months after he had appeared on the cover of Time. His co-author and researcher, Richard Suskind, was sent to prison in New York State. Edith Irving returned voluntarily to Switzerland, where she served one year for cashing the checks.
                Los Angeles Times book critic Robert Kirsch had read the manuscript. Kirsch wrote: "[Irving] weaves the story so skillfully that it's almost impossible to tell where fact leaves off and fiction begins, if indeed such a distinction can be made. It's a hypnotizing narrative, witty and wickedly outspoken, with poignant insights about male sexuality. It's also the best primer around on how to become a billionaire�a study of money's power to corrupt absolutely. Whether genuine or a hoax, it's a crime not to publish it."
More and more pundits began to say that the Republican administration could not afford publication of the autobiography because it revealed details of an alleged $405,000 bribe from Howard Hughes to Richard Nixon.
                In his 1985 biography, Citizen Hughes, Michael Drosnin wrote, "The account of the Hughes-Nixon dealings in Irving's book was quoted in an unpublished Senate Watergate Committee report. H.R. Haldeman started getting FBI reports on the Irving affair directly from J. Edgar Hoover, and in early 1972 the White House managed to obtain a copy of the still-secret manuscript from a source at McGraw-Hill.
Nixon read at least a summary of Irving's account. It came as quite a shock. The $400,000 figure [which Irving had only guessed at] was probably not far off the mark." The secret figure was so close to fact, John Ehrlichman later suggested, that the Hunt-Liddy team was sent to burglarize National Democratic Headquarters at the Watergate in order to discover what Irving might have told the Democrats about the Hughes-Nixon loans. The infamous 17-minute ``gap" in the Nixon White House tapes allegedly dealt with that specific subject.
                In 1976, aboard a private jet flying from Acapulco to Houston, Howard Hughes died under what, at the least, were bizarre circumstances. Newspaper reports claimed that he had become a codeine and Valium addict who weighted only ninety pounds.
                Until 1989, the manuscript of the Autobiography reposed in a carton that Clifford Irving carried with him wherever he moved: to prison camp in Pennsylvania, to the shores of East Hampton, to a medieval village in France, to the ski slopes of Aspen, and to the mountains of Mexico. The International Herald Tribune called it "the most famous unpublished book of the 20th century."
                When Irving first announced that he might present the text to the world, Rosemont Corporation, an entity controlled by the Hughes empire, sued to prevent publication. The Appellate Division of the New York State courts ruled in favor of the author's right to publish it.
                After what amounts to a virtual 27-year publishing ban on the manuscript, The Autobiography of Howard Hughes was going to be made public. Instead, Irving simply sold the manuscript and it disappeared from public sight.
                If Howard Hughes didn't dictate it, as Irving first claimed, why should it be published?
Here is one answer.
                In 1971 before they heard the book was a hoax�Book-of-the-Month Club called The Autobiography of Howard Hughes "the most important document in American literature published in forty years."
                And in a recent interview, Clifford Irving said: "I had access to the secret files of Time magazine and the Los Angeles Times. I dug up unpublished memoirs and private tape recordings of conversations with Hughes. I interviewed men and women who knew Hughes intimately and had never been willing speak to anyone about him. I grew to understand the man. The truth of a life is elusive and always subjective. The novelist is a kind of channeler�he can often get deeper into the subject than the historian, especially when the subject is a reclusive phantom like Howard Hughes. He was a tremendous force in 20th-century American technology and finance. His views are raw, powerful. His revelations are stunning. His life was a modern myth."

107. Irving, Clifford. Fake! The Fascinating Story of Elmyr de Hory. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co., 1969. Irving�s education in the art of forgery.
108. Irving, Clifford. The Autobiography of Howard Hughes. N.p.: Terrific Books, n.d. The manuscript of the �autobiography� was auctioned of to an unknown buyer in 1989. This book, purportedly only 1 of 95 copies printed is likely a piracy, possibly a hoax itself.
109. Irving, Clifford & Suskind, Richard. Project Octavio , London: Allison and Busby, 1977.The Story of the Howard Hughes Hoax. 1st edition in dust jacket., Story of the great Howard Hughes Biography Hoax carried out by the Authors. Many of the legends & apocryphal stories of Hughes exploits, inc. his relationship with Lockheed Corporation, are based on the inventions of these authors.
110. Time Magazine. Feb. 21, 1972. Clifford Irving.
  The Anatomy of a Literary Hoax (1979)
                 A friend ( Sid Berger) of bibliographer Tim Barrett was asked to proof read the galleys of his new book Nagashizuki: The Japanese Craft of Hand Papermaking. As a prank, Berger inserted in the bibliography a listing of a Sesame Street book �The Invention of Paper� by the muppet Ernie on the theory that no one would ever discover the ridiculous entry because �no one ever reads bibliographies.� He was right.
112. Berger, Sidney E. The Anatomy of a Literary Hoax. New Castle, DE: Oak Knoll Books, 1994.
Holy Blood, Holy Grail: basis of The DaVinci Code (1982)
Holy Blood, Holy Grail, a 1983 book and its bastard child, The DaVinci Code, is an interesting example of how hoaxers can write a book that appears to be historical fact because it is sometimes based on fact, but is really wild conjecture built on even wilder speculation. The essential premise of these books is that the crucifixion of Jesus was a hoax (the pot calling the kettle black?) and that Jesus escaped with Mary Magdalene to the South of France where they were wed and had children that are the ancestors of living people. The books go on to say that for nearly 2000 years these lineal descendants have been protected by The Knights Templar and other religio-political groups. Dan Brown incorporated the �facts� of Holy Blood and made millions with his DaVinci Code. The implication of the novel is that it is true; it has spurred studies, tours, seminars and research trips into its historical basis. Of course, like the spurious book (and its sequel The Messianic Legacy) upon which it is based, there is none. Like the desire to believe in the Loch Ness Monster, the Abominable Snowman and Area 51, people, generally, love the tall tale over the common truth.
113. Document on vellum from the archival evidence of Holy Blood, Holy Grail. In an omitted chapter of the book published in 1982, authors Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh stated that Jesus was buried not in southern France, but in northern England. The �guardians�, fearing the Romans would discover the tomb, took the body to as remote a region as they could; at the time, Britannia had not been absorbed into the Empire. They called the burial place, �Shal-Mouf,� Aramaic for �Lord�s bed� or �Lord�s resting place.� The authors contend that William the Conqueror (a French Norman king) invaded England primarily to recover the body of Jesus and return it to the safety of France. The Knights Templar informed William of the location and he safely recovered it and transferred it to Rennes-Le-Chateau.
                The authors in attempting to unravel the mystery of the actual British locale noticed that Shal-Mouf is an anagram of Foulsham (pronounced �fulsome�), an estate in Yorkshire. In tracing the chain of title of that estate, they discovered this document with the pencil notation, �Shal-Mouf� written in the margin where it would be hidden from casual perusers because it was stitched, along with other court documents, into a large book. After the hidden marginal note, it states, � Anno LXXII� or year 77 or 77 years. Jesus was 33 years old at the time of the crucifixion. Using newly documented dating principles, He was born actually in the year 4 B.C. Therefore, he would have been 33 in the year 29 A.D. The authors contend that Jesus lived to the age of 77 and would, therefore, have died in the year 73 A.D. The date of the document is 1873, exactly 1800 years later and only 30 days before the discovery of the tomb at Rennes-Le-Chateau. Within the document itself, the letters Shal-Mouf appear in hidden order with minute crosses over them, much in the fashion of prophecies that appear hidden in the text of the Torah and referred to as �the Bible Code.�
114. Baigent, Michael, Richard Leigh & Henry Lincoln. Holy Blood, Holy Grail. New York: Dell, 1983. Paperback edition, still in print.
115. Olson, Carl E. and Sandra Meisel. The DaVinci Code Hoax. Ft Collins (CO): Ignatius Press, 2004.
  Mark William Hofmann (1954 - )
                 Mark William Hofmann, born Pearl Harbor Day, 7 December 1954, in Salt Lake City, Utah, became by age thirty one of the state's most notorious, complex, and successful criminals.
                A double murderer, Hofmann is considered by forensic experts to be the best forger yet caught. He specialized in Mormon holographs and currency but also forged other Americana. Hofmann successfully duped manuscript experts nationwide, including those within the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Library of Congress, the American Antiquarian Society, and--a prime customer--the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
                The second of three children and only son of William and Lucille Hofmann, Mark Hofmann was raised in Salt Lake City and in Buena Park, California. He received an Eagle Scout award, filled a mission to England for the Mormon Church, attended Utah State University in Logan, and married Doralee Olds in 1979 in the Salt Lake Temple. He fathered four children, the last as an accused murderer.
                On 16 October 1985 Hofmann was critically injured by an exploding pipe bomb in his sports car. He quickly became the suspect in two bombing murders the previous day which had killed Steven F. Christensen, thirty-one years old, and Kathleen Webb Sheets, fifty. Investigators learned that Hofmann and Christensen had been scheduled the morning of the murders to close the "sale" of the McLellin Collection, a purportedly controversial document collection that turned out to be non-existent.
                Christensen was a facilitator in the snarled deal that involved top LDS Church authorities, one of whom had arranged an unsecured $185,000 bank loan for Hofmann. The loan was in arrears. A mission president in Nova Scotia had agreed to buy the collection as a favor to the Mormon Church, keep it for a year or two, then donate it to the church for a hefty tax write-off. Church leaders had agreed to accept the collection, which was described by Hofmann as very inflammatory. Christensen, a history buff, wanted the papers studied by Mormon historians and had ensured his opportunity to see them by volunteering to authenticate the collection at the time of sale.
                In fact, Hofmann had been selling various non-existent collections all year in a lucrative scam that was threatening to topple, leaving him pressed by irate creditors. Meanwhile, certain Mormon document forgeries, particularly the "white salamander letter" that Christensen had earlier bought, authenticated, and donated to the Mormon Church, had projected a revisionist view of history that stimulated historical review and attracted wide media attention. In the spring and summer of 1985, the LDS Church had endured a series of embarrassing document-related media stories, including news reports that an inflammatory collection was headed for secret church vaults.
                Christensen, who had left a floundering investment company and was facing bankruptcy, resolved to enforce Hofmann's promises on the church's behalf even as church authority Elder Hugh Pinnock, who had arranged Hofmann's bank loan, offered to help Christensen survive his financial dilemma. When Christensen locked up a supposed piece of the McLellin Collection, which Hofmann was trying to sell separately, Hofmann began buying bomb parts.
                About 6:30 A.M. on 15 October Hofmann placed the first bomb, packaged in a cardboard box, at the home of Gary Sheets, Christensen's former boss and company president. He then placed a similarly packaged bomb--this one laced with nails--outside Christensen's office door. Although Sheets's wife Kathleen was killed rather than her husband, Hofmann had successfully linked the bombing motive with the failing CFS Financial Corporation.
                However, this diversion worked too well; that afternoon a church leader simply replaced Christensen in the McLellin deal and rescheduled the closing for the next day. Being of course unable to close the deal, Hofmann drove ninety miles to buy bomb parts under several aliases and returned to Salt Lake City with a third motion-sensitive bomb, which he dropped while stalking another victim. This he hoped would alarm church officials sufficiently to deter them from pursuing the McLellin Collection.
The murder investigation uncovered the forgery/fraud scheme. Forensic history was made in detecting Hofmann's method for chemically aging ink that was then applied to old paper. Following a five-week preliminary hearing, Hofmann was bound over for trial on thirty felonies, including two capital murders. Because he agreed to plead guilty to two counts of second degree murder and to discuss his crimes, the prosecutors agreed to dismiss the other charges, to accept a reduced sentence on the Sheets homicide, and to allow concurrent sentences. Thus, Hofmann was sentenced to serve one five-years-to-life sentence in the Utah State Penitentiary. Parole was indicated at seven years for someone with Hofmann's first-offender status. Hofmann rewarded the prosecutors with a four-hundred-page transcript on forgery but refused to discuss the murders.
                In January 1988, one year after he entered prison, Hofmann attended a hearing before the Board of Pardons. When the board explored his thinking regarding the homicides, his responses convinced them to refuse to set a parole date. Shortly after the hearing, coded letters threatening the board were found in Hofmann's cell, and investigators learned that even before the hearing he had threatened their lives in conversations with other inmates. Following the hearing, Hofmann twice attempted to commit suicide, overdosing on drugs obtained from other inmates; however, in both August 1988 and August 1990 he was unsuccessful. The final irony, tragic, if not biblical in its own way, occurred when, after overdosing on sleeping pills, he fell asleep on his right arm cutting off the circulation for over 12 hours. When discovered and revived by prison guards, the muscle tissue was permanently atrophied. The hand that created forgeries and pipe bombs with alacrity was forever useless.
116. Oath of a Freeman. Facsimile copy.
117. Manuscript Poem Signed by Emily [Dickinson]. A Mark Hofmann forgery of a poem never written by Dickinson.
118. Jesse, Dean C. The Personal Writings of Joseph Smith. Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1984. Contains numerous Hofmann forgeries.
119. [Hofmann, Mark.] Hofmann�s Confession. Vol. I, II & III. Salt Lake City: Utah Lighthouse Ministry, 1987. Transcription of court proceedings.
120. Lindsey, Robert. A Gathering of the Saints: A True Story of Money Murder and Deceit. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1988
121. Sillitoe, Linda and Allen Roberts. Salamander: The Story of the Mormon Forgery Murders. Salt Lake: Signature Books, 1988
122. Turley, Richard E., Jr. Victims : The LDS Church and the Mark Hofmann Case. Urbana (IL): University of Illinois Press, 1992.
123. Tanner, Jerald. Tracking the White Salamander: The Story of Mark Hofmann, Murder and Forged Mormon Documents. Includes Confessions of a White Salamander. Salt Lake City: Utah Lighthouse Ministry, n.d. The official Mormon Church view which avoids the most important aspect of the crimes: the Church�s secreting of the forged documents because they contradicted church dogma.
The Jack the Ripper Diary (1981)
                 Psychologists, historians and the police have agreed to disagree about the authenticity of the infamous Jack the Ripper diary after an exhaustive debate.
                More than 100 delegates at the International Investigative Psychology Conference at Liverpool University failed to reach a consensus on whether Jack the Ripper was in fact a Liverpool cotton trader called James Maybrick. The diary of James Maybrick, in which he takes credit for the horrific Ripper murders in the East End of London in the 1880s, was "discovered" by fitter Mike Barrett as he renovated a house in Liverpool in 1992.
Ink Test
                Psychologists and police officers from as far afield as South Africa and Japan met at the conference on Tuesday in an attempt to decide once and for all whether or not the Maybrick diary is a forgery.
                The only conclusion they did reach was that the document was written by someone with a "disturbed mind" and it was therefore "fascinating", even if it was not genuine. Author Shirley Harrison, who wrote the academic work The Diary of Jack the Ripper, said: "Although I have not been able to prove that it is genuine, I seriously believe the diary deserves serious historical and academic consideration."
                She said tests have failed to conclusively date the ink in which the diary was written to the 1880s, but neither could they demonstrate that the ink is not Victorian.
'Enormous insight'
                Head of the Liverpool University Centre for Investigative Psychology, Professor David Canter, who hosted the conference, said psychological profiling shows it is "plausible" that the diary may have been written by Jack the Ripper.
                He said: "The way it's written - the style of thinking - does reveal some components that are remarkably subtle."
                "This was either produced by a very skilled author or someone with detailed knowledge of the Ripper history, or someone with enormous insight into carrying out these crimes and the person most likely to have that is the person who did carry out those crimes."
Historical Errors
                The case of Jack the Ripper is of enduring interest to criminal psychologists, because it was the first recorded occasion that a "psychological profile" of a criminal had been created.
Historian Keith Skinner suggested the diary was a very old forgery, but a forgery nonetheless, because of errors in historical detail.
                He cites an occasion when the diary's author mentions a Liverpool pub called the Post House, but said the pub did not acquire that name until after 1888.
                A show of hands at the end of the conference revealed that about 30 delegates were convinced the diary was a forgery.
                Professor Canter said the Jack the Ripper debate was intended as "light relief" for international delegates attending three days of conferences on investigative psychology at the university.
Facts about Jack the Ripper:
 Jack the Ripper carried out the horrific murder and mutilation of five prostitutes in the Whitechapel area of London between August and November 1888.
 The victims were Mary Ann Nicholls, 42, Annie Chapman, 47, Elizabeth Stride, 45, Catherine Eddowes, 25, and Mary Kelly, 25.
 The Ripper may also have been responsible for the murder of prostitute Martha Turner, 35, who was stabbed but not subjected to the ripper's trademark mutilation.
 The name Jack the Ripper was coined in letters sent to the press and police in which the writer claimed credit for the murders. Opinion is divided about whether or not the letters were sent by the killer himself.
 In the disputed diary Maybrick says he carried out the murders in revenge for his wife's infidelity with an unmarried businessman called Alfred Brierley.
 Maybrick died of poisoning in 1889 - the year after the Ripper murders - and his wife was convicted of his murder.
 Warner Books of America cancelled plans to print 200,000 copies of the diary after speculation that it was forged.
 In 1996, the man who found the diary, Mike Barrett, declared it a forgery, but his testimony was discounted because he was unable to prove it.
124. Harrison, Shirley. The Diary of Jack the Ripper. New York: Hyperion, 1993. First Edition. "The discovery, the investigation, the debate. Includes the full text of the diary and the arguments for and against its authenticity."
  The Hitler Diaries (1983)

            The fall of the Third Reich created a thriving market in Nazi memorabilia. On April 22, 1983 the German magazine Der Stern announced that it had made the greatest Nazi memorabilia find of all time: a diary kept by Adolf Hitler himself. And this was not just one thin journal. It was a 62-volume mother lode, covering the crucial years of 1932-1945.
                The diaries caused a buzz of excitement to sweep through the media. Magazines and news agencies bid for the right to serialize them. Journalists, historians, and World War II buffs eagerly anticipated what insights they would reveal into the mind of the twentieth century's most infamous ruler. Of course, voices of skepticism were raised. Many historians pointed out that Hitler was notorious for not liking to take notes himself, but Der Stern insisted that it was not possible that the diaries were a fraud.
                The explanation of where the diaries had come from was plausible enough to be credible, while also being appropriately unverifiable. Apparently during the last days of the Third Reich an airplane carrying many of Hitler's personal effects had crashed near Dresden. The diaries were pulled out of the wreckage of the crash by farmers and preserved for the next three decades by an East German general. In the early eighties they were smuggled out of East Germany, one at a time, by the brother of a West German memorabilia dealer named Konrad Kujau. They were then sold to Der Stern through the efforts of their reporter Gerd Heidemann for the astronomical price of 9.9 million marks ($4 million).
                Anticipation continued to build about what the diaries would reveal until experts had a chance to examine them and delivered their unanimous verdict: the diaries were clumsy, almost amateurish forgeries. Physically it was clear that the diaries were fake. The whitener and fibers in their paper were of postwar manufacture. They were bound in plastic. The content of the journals was also a dead giveaway. The entries were stupefyingly dull and trivial, not revealing anything novel about Hitler's state of mind. They showed Hitler as ignorant of the concentration camps and concerned about getting tickets for Eva Braun to see the Olympic Games in Berlin. Moreover, most of the entries had simply been plagiarized from a book called Hitler's Speeches and Proclamations written by Max Domarus, a former Nazi federal archivist. Even historical errors that Domarus had made were repeated in the Hitler diaries.
                Faced with this evidence, Der Stern grudgingly admitted that it had been duped. The source of the forgery was soon traced to Konrad Kujau, the West German memorabilia dealer. He had written the diaries himself, after having perfected the art of imitating Hitler's handwriting. Heidemann, a Der Stern reporter who brokered the sale was also accused of having skimmed off over 1.7 million of the marks that had been paid for the diaries. Together this pair, Kujau and Heidemann, were convicted of fraud and sentenced to over four years in prison each. Kujau produced hundreds of forged Third Reich items including artwork by Aldolf Hitler and continued to do so from prison and after his release. The post-trial forgeries are also signed by Konrad Kujau, or so he has stated.
125. (The German Olympic Committee). Olympia 1936: Die Olympischen Spiele 1936 in Berlin. Two volumes. Contains 127 + 168 pages, with hundreds of tipped-in Olympic photos (a few in color), additional illustrations, and a large foldout map of the Berlin venues at the end of Volume One, bound in deep, aniline blue cloth, with black and gold labels, enclosed in stark but striking, black and white, pictorial dust jackets. With a forged inscription from Adolf Hitler.
126. A collection of authentic and forged artwork by Adolf Hitler.
127. Price, Billy F. Adolf Hitler: The Unknown Artist. Houston: Billy F. Price Publishing, 1984. A self-published illustrated guide with half of the catalogue consisting of forgeries, many by Konrad Kujau. Includes 60 original Hitler�s in the collection of the Marquess of Bath. The only catalogue of Hitler�s art.
128. A British Ten Pound Note forged by Nazi Germany. Hitler successfully forged hundreds of thousands of Brtish paper money in an effort to flood the British economy and cause economic chaos. These were produced by skilled Jewish engravers in concentration camps.
129. Tabori, Paul, ed. The Private Life of Adolf Hitler: Intimate Notes and Diaries of Eva Braun. London: Aldus Press, 1949. A bogus diary by Hitler�s mistress which shows him to be a sexual deviant. This is one of many books by Hitler intimates produced after the war which held him up to ridicule.
130. Newsweek Magazine. May 2, 1983. Plagiarized material photocopied from Stern but never paid for. Newsweek never recovered from its unauthorized use of the forged material.
131. Time Magazine. May 16, 1983.
132. Hugo, Richard. The Hitler Diaries: A Novel. New York: William Morrow & Co., Inc., 1983. A novel based on the Diaries hoax.
133. Pretzel, Marian. Portrait of a Young Forger: An Incredible True Story of Triumph Over the Third Reich. New York: Knightsbridge Publishing, 1985. First edition. The story of an ingenious forger who created forgerd documents that allowed him to enter and leave Nazi Germany with Jews destined to exterminated. A rare example of the forger as hero.
Contemporary Forgeries and Hoaxes
Facsimiles as Forgeries
In the nature of providing copies of scarcities to scholars, many publishers, both public and private, have produced facsimiles. Some are so finely reproductive of the original that they are difficult for most people to discern. Add the forger�s eye to the mix and it is a simple matter to make a few alterations and create an �original.�
The First Editions Library. In the 1990s, this publisher started producing facsimiles of great American novels such as The Great Gatsby, replicating in great detail the often very scarce dustwrappers. At the outset, there was no indication that could be readily observed that these were not authentic. The book trade implored the publisher to mark the jacket in some fashion. While they complied, it was a simple matter to deal with the small �FEL� logo on the back flap.
134. A Selection of First Edition Library Facsimiles.
Signed Portraits. In the late 1890s, it was common for publishers to place a beautiful lithograph of the portrait of the writer of the book as a frontispiece. These were usually �signed.� The signature, however, was a lithographically reproduced facsimile of the author�s signature. The lithography was so good that only with the use of a microscope could it be determined that it was not a genuine signature. It is a simple matter to excise the frontis, mat and frame it and then pass it off as a signed portrait. These still appear on the market today.
135. An Excised Portrait of Thomas Hardy �Signed.�
Facsimile Books and Documents. Thomas Wise got his start, it is thought, by creating facsimiles of rare first edition pamphlets of the great Romantic poets. These were usually bound in with an explanation of the item and distributed to literary societies. The facsimiles could be excised from the book and sold as originals. Some publishers reproduced in facsimile copies of the Gettysburg Address, the Constitution, rare old books like the New England Primer and other notable texts. With a little imagination and household tools, forgers could alter and age these items and sell them as originals.
136. The New England Primer in Facsimile. This edition has been used frequently to dupe the unwary.
                 There are many books still in print that perpetuate hoaxes from years ago or which have been exposed recently but continue to sell as authentic despite publicity of the spuriousness. Some are simply misinformation that has been passed down through time. One of the best is the �fact� that Eskimos have at least ten different words for the �snow� because they are confronted with it constantly. In fact, they have only one word for snow and it translates to snow.
137. Pullum, Geoffrey K. The Great Eskimo Vocabulary Hoax and Other Irrelevant Essays on the Study of Language.   Chicago: University Press, 1991.
  Armand Schwermer (1926 � 1999)
                 This poet, much like James Macpherson and Thomas Chatterton, decided to base his poetry on ancient texts or �tablets� in cuneiform and hieroglyphs. He was simply the�translator.� In fact, the �tablets� were drawn and �written� by Schwerner. His gullible financer and unknowing co-conspirator, Elaine DeKooning (wife of Wilhelm DeKooning, the artist) through her husband�s artistic might and inherited wealth at the project believing the poems to be ancient and, therefore, archetypal. They are neither. He writes very much in the overblown mode of Macpherson in the Ossian Poems.
138. Schwerner, Armand. Sounds of the River Naranjana & The Tablets I-XXIV. N.p.: Station Hill, 1983. Signed by Armand Schwerner and Elaine de Kooning. Cover by Elaine de Kooning. 1 of 56 copies signed by the author and the artist. In cloth covered boards.
139. Schwerner, Armand. The Tablets. Orono, ME: The National Poetry Foundation, 1999, �The Tablets takes its place as a worthy successor of the great American long poems of our century: Pound's Cantos, Williams' Paterson, Olson's Maximus, Zukofsky's A.� Unfortunately for the reviewer, the Tablets translated by Schwerner were hoaxes and the poetry in pseudo-mythological terms is pompous and overblown. The first edition, published in 1968, included eight tablets. Over the years, The Tablets continued to grow. The present edition is the first to include all twenty-seven tablets that Schwerner had completed at the time of his death, along with the poet's own commentary on the work in the form of Journals/Divagations. This edition also includes a CD of Schwerner reading extensive selections of The Tablets. �Schwerner's poem mimics the conventions observed in real scholarly editions of ancient cuneiform texts The Tablets is a Chinese-box puzzle, in place of a primal scene of archeological insight, a game of hide-and-seek, in place of 'knowledge,' uncertainty, speculation, make-believe and trompe l'oeil effects� --Brian McHale.
  Penelope Ashe:
Naked Came the Stranger

                Naked Came the Stranger was a novel that was designed to test just how low the standards of taste of the American public had sunk. 25 Newsday staff members each wrote a chapter of this novel. Their only requirements were that their chapters could contain no plot or character development, no social insight, and no verbal skill. Only one thing was required: a minimum of two sex scenes per chapter.
                The resulting novel was attributed to a fictitious author (Penelope Ashe), who was played by the attractive sister-in-law of Mike McGrady, the columnist who conceived the idea for the hoax. McGrady's sister-in-law played her role to the fullest, appearing in interviews wearing low-cut dresses and bubbling about the joys of sexual liberation. The American public predictably ate it up and sales of the book soared. The Newsday writers eventually began to feel guilty about all the money they were receiving from the farce, and confessed. But the resulting publicity only made the book sell even better. The book is still in print and new buyers are unaware of the hoax which is now almost 40 years old. Apparently, the public�s taste has not improved. Or is that stating the obvious?
140. Ashe, Penelope. Naked Came the Stranger. New York: Lyle Stuart, 1969.
141. Ashe, Penelope. Naked Came the Stranger. Ft Lee, NJ: Barricade Books, 2003. Paperback edition. Now called �A Cult Classic.�
The Alamo Diary Hoax (1975)
                 When the first English translation of a diary written by a soldier in the Mexican army under General Santa Anna appeared in 1975, it was viewed by many die-hard Crockett fans as a malicious fake. When Dan Kilgore, then president of the Texas State Historical Association, endorsed the diary's version of Crockett's death, he was accused of being a �traitor.� It has remained a touchy issue.
                The controversy was reignited in 1994 when North Carolina State University historian Dr. James Crisp was asked by the journal of the Texas State Historical Association, The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, to review the book Defense of a Legend: Crockett and the de la Pe�a Diary by amateur historian and New York City fire department lieutenant Bill Groneman. Groneman claimed that the diary was �very likely a forgery.�
                Until that time Crisp had no serious interest in Davy Crockett, but he realized Groneman had detected something odd about the diary. Conventional historical wisdom had it that the diary was published in 1836, which Groneman succeeded in showing had not been the case. It was only first published in the 1950s. But, Crisp suspected, Groneman's reasoning that the diary was a forgery was flawed.
                "Groneman got it half right," says Crisp. Crisp agrees the diary wasn't published at the time it was written but says that date doesn't compromise the book's authenticity.
                So began a three-year professional detour for Crisp -- filled with painstaking document hunting, vigorous debate, and an occasional hostile exchange of articles and letters in historical and popular publications.
                Crisp is tinkering with an American myth, one that goes to the heart of red-blooded, Anglo-American individualism, tenacity and ferocity. Davy Crockett, legend has it, died fighting, taking as many Mexican soldiers as he could, during the most memorable and inequitable battle of the Texan Revolution. When Crockett ran out of ammunition, he used the butt end of his rifle as a weapon until he could fight no more. Everyone that saw the movie or watched Davy Crockett on T.V. knew that.
                Or so the story went and so Crockett deified -- until Crisp showed through meticulous work that the diary, written by Mexican officer Jose de la Pe�a, is almost certainly not a forgery. In Texas libraries, at Yale University and in 19th-century newspapers, Crisp found corroborating written accounts that served to document the memoir's authenticity. The "diary" is really a 400-page memoir, expanded by de la Pe�a himself from an original 109-page diary he wrote during the failed Mexican war effort. In no uncertain terms, he identifies the celebrity Crockett, and describes his brutal death, along with that of a half dozen other captured defenders at the hands of Mexican soldiers upon the direct order of General Santa Anna after being captured and tortured.
                A native Texan, Crisp teaches courses on the American West and antebellum South at NC State, and he isn't interested in perpetuating or overturning the Crockett myth, he says. He is interested in historical truth. He has even been mocked by one Alamo expert as being the president of "The Who Cares How Davy Died Association."
                So, besides inflicting a massive bruise to American machismo, why does it matter how Davy died?
                "Well, they do have a reenactment of the Alamo battle every year in March," says Crisp. "They might need to make some adjustments."
                What no one makes mention of is the fact that a forger would have had access to the same information that Crisp discovered. In short, his �corroborating evidence� is just as likely to be the source of the forgery. The dubious provenance of the Diary is the strongest proof of its spurious nature.

142. De La Pena, Jose Enrique. With Santa Anna in Texas: A Personal Narrative of the Revolution. Translated and edited by Carmen Perry. College Station, TX: Texas A&M, 1975.
  Norma Khouri
                 Norma Khouri is hardly a household name in this country. But in Australia, the 34-year-old author has developed quite a reputation -- first, as author of a memoir hailed as one of the best ever, then as the possible perpetrator of the first big literary hoax of the 21st century. And even though the case may be unfolding Down Under, it's clearly a story with international scope.
                In 2003, Norma Khouri's book -- called "Forbidden Love" in Australia, "Honor Lost" in the U.S. -- was published for English-speaking readers worldwide. It is -- or rather, claimed to be -- the true tale of Khouri's closest friend and business partner in Jordan, a Muslim woman named Dalia, who fell in love with a Christian soldier. Dalia's father allegedly murdered her for this transgression, causing Khouri to flee the country. The book sold 50,000 copies in the U.S. and 200,000 in Australia -- whopping numbers for Kangaroo Country.
                But its success may have been its undoing. Khouri's campaign against honor killings brought her to the attention of two Jordanian women, one an investigative reporter for the Jordanian Times, Rana Husseini, who found the book loaded with factual errors. Meanwhile, at the Sydney Morning Herald, literary editor Malcolm Knox had his suspicions. Fluent in Arabic, he was puzzled that Khouri could barely speak the language. After his 18-month investigation, the Herald went public with its findings claiming that Khouri was a fraud. Random House Australia, Khouri's publisher in that part of the world, put out a press release saying that she would respond "within days." But Khouri disappeared until her lawyer showed up with evidence in support of the book's veracity. Random House immediately sent back the material, asking for translations and further verification.
                At that point Khouri could still redeem herself. But until further notice the book has been pulled from the shelves. All of her publishers are distancing themselves. A series of Random House Australia press releases emphasize, in fact, that the original deal was cut between "a reputable New York literary agent," and that the book was edited in New York.
                However, the Sydney Morning Herald's expose was not the first warning shot fired at Khouri's book. More than a year ago, the Jordanian women sent their critiques to Random and Atria, an imprint of Simon & Schuster that was the book's New York publisher. According to Simon & Schuster's Adam Rothberg, Khouri provided "satisfactory responses to the matters raised," but "nothing indicated to us or Random that her work was fiction." Factual errors were corrected in the paperback versions. Larger complaints about the book's point of view were interpreted as a difference of opinion.
                But as this story evolves, it is a cautionary tale for publishers; it reveal shoddy fact-finding and editing. Two enterprising journalists don't seem like a sufficient stopgap. And, with the number of published books increasing each year, hoaxes and frauds are sure to proliferate
143. Khouri, Norma. Honor Lost: Love and Death in Modern-Day Jerusalem. New York: Atria Books, 2003.
  JT LeRoy
                 JT Leroy has written several best-selling novels and short story collections. He was touted as a gay 19-year-old prodigy and there is little question that his prose style is quite good, perhaps, too good. The dust jackets and promotional material held out the author as a transvestite homosexual prostitute who used his experiences as fodder for his seamy literature. In short, it was held out that the fiction was true, only the names were changed to protect the innocent. In fact, JT LeRoy is a middle-aged, West Coast woman with children and a common law husband that turned her (him) in, but not before huge sums were paid for the salacious stories. Every critic and thousands of readers were sucked in.
  SAMPLE REVIEWS of JT LeRoy
From Publishers Weekly
Who would have thought that there were so many truckstop devotees of cross-dressing children in West Virginia? In this disturbing debut novel by 19-year-old LeRoy, they appear to be everywhere. The narrator, a 12-year-old boy, has renamed himself Sarah after his whorish mother because he has learned from her example that "Most anything you want in this world is easier when you're a pretty girl." Following in her footsteps, he plies his trade at the Doves, a truckstop/gourmet restaurant run by Glad, a despotic pimp with a heart of gold. When his mother rejects him, Sarah runs away from the Doves and finds his way to the hellish Three Crutches, a rival truckstop run by the evil Le Loup. Taken for a girl, and then advertised as Saint Sarah in a money-making ploy by Le Loup, Sarah is expected to bless truckers and then walk on water. Will these experiences convince Sarah to resume the life of a full-time boy? And will he discover that there's no place like home? Sometimes Sarah's masochistic attention-getting strategies and desperate need to be loved are genuinely moving, but the freak-show world LeRoy conjures up never quite gels. In the self-consciously bizarre gallery of misfits and fetishes he assembles, potentially resonant themes like the interchangeability of saints and whores are obscured, and the novel remains but a curiosity. LeRoy has edited several anthologies under the pseudonym Terminator.

The New York Times Book Review, Catherine Texier
For a first novelist, J.T. LeRoy is astonishingly confident.
From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com
J.T. Leroy is one of a growing number of gay confessionalist artists -- a group that includes the singer Rufus Wainwright and the film director Jonathan Caouette. Their work is regarded as redemptive, and Leroy in particular is celebrated for his terse, self-focused excavations. Perhaps this solipsistic quality will be eroded over time: As the author ages, he may yet raise his gaze from his own befouled lap and view the world around.
In Leroy's bitty new novella, Harold's End, a wary, hopeless boy named Oliver is plucked from San Francisco's infamous Polk Street hustler huddle. Plumped up in the Castro district, in the home of an older man named Larry, he is given hamburgers, the best heroin available, and a pet snail named Harold. This arrangement goes sour after an evening of non-negotiated scatological play: "The fourth day after my enema, Larry wakes me up in the afternoon. 'I'm having some people over, and I, I need you to go out.' "
Oliver, with Harold, is returned to his dirty corner and reunited with his street friends, youngsters whose names -- Crayon, Gotti, Serenity -- wouldn't look out of place in an S.E. Hinton book. But Harold's thin shell, it turns out, isn't tough enough for street life. Oh golly: metaphor.
Illustrated by the Australian artist Cherry Hood's gothed-up Margaret Keane-like watercolors of the book's characters, Harold's End is dedicated to Harold (and to "all the inadvertent losses") and very briefly introduced by the novelist/personality Dave Eggers (140 words, minus titles and proper names). It closes with an unseemly oddity: a round of applause by the editor, Michael Ray, and four pages of sweet thanks from the author.
The writing itself is a concise helping of large-print gloom-candy to tide over fans: Leroy's next most recent (and second) book, The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things, was published in 2001. Now in his mid-twenties, Leroy has mined his reportedly troubled adolescence for these grim, tight and presumably autobiographical tales of the wasted years of a horribly abused youth.
But: Were those years really so wasted?
Leroy's fear of public appearances, frequent use of disguises, and muteness in the face of questions about his history contrast with his bad habit of having his name appear in the press amid a protective flurry of names more boldface than his. The situation has provoked speculation about the authenticity of both his persona and his work. Those questions should be irrelevant. Drawn from life or not, Leroy's work is labeled fiction. But in light of all the victim-cum-celebrity hoopla, these books serve not as fiction but as creative memoirs, delivering catharsis for those who may have been similarly situated and who see themselves in Leroy's work.
Leroy, freed by fame, fortune -- and actual hard work -- from whatever serious troubles he may have had, is no longer anyone's victim. He is now capable of being exploited only by himself, and he will face the risks that any of the once-poor but now resource-rich must when they are subject to -- or, really, subject themselves to -- a torrent of ferocious, boundary-invading consumption. All grown up, he is his own personal Kazakhstan.
  144. LeRoy, JT. Sarah: A Novel. New York: Bloomsbury, 2000. First edition. Peculiar school library bound book with pink ribbon integral bookmark. Photograph of �author� on back board. Extensive review quotes on endpapers.
145. LeRoy, JT. The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things. New York: Bloomsbury, 2001. The author�s second book, a collection of short stories. Pictorial dust jacket, rear board filled with reviews by perhaps not surprisingly duped reviwers from the New York Times to other authors. All should have known better. The irony of the title is inescapable. This was made into a film and released in 2002.
  �Flip Side� Hoax Books
A selection of books by authors that believe that real events are hoaxes.
146. Collins, Andrew & Chris Ogilvie-Herald. Tutankhamun: The Exodus Conspiracy. London: Virgin Books, 2002. Explores the �myth� of the Jews in bondage in the Book of Exodus and posits that there was an agreement with King Tut, not Ramses, to release them.
147. Meyssan, Thierry. 9/11: The Big Lie. London: Carnot Press, 2002. Discusses the view that the attacks on Americans in 2001 were actually �inside jobs� and not terrorist acts at all.
148. Butz, Arthur A. The Hoax of the Twentieth Century: The Case Against the Presumed Extermination of European Jewry. New York: Theses & Dissertations Press, 2003. One of many books that call the Holocaust a hoax.
149. Lheureux, Philippe. Moon Landings: Did NASA Lie? New York: Carnot Books, 2003. �Explodes� the myth of the American moon-landing.
  Suggested Reading

Aldington, Richard. Frauds. London: William Heindemann, 1957.

Altick, Richard D. The Scholar Adventurers. New York: Macmillan Co., 1950.

Basbanes, Nicholas A. A Gentle Madness: Bibliophiles, Bibliomanes and the Eternal Passion for Books. New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1995.

Berkeley, Edmond Jr. Autographs and Manuscripts: A Collector�s Manual. New York: Charles Scribner�s Sons, 1978.

Clement, William L. Facsimiles and Forgeries: A Guide to a Timely Exhibition. Ann Arbor (MI): Univ of Michigan Press, 1934.

Cole, Sonia. Counterfeit. London: John Murray, 1955.

Forging a Collection: The Frank W. Tober Collection on Literary Forgery. Newark (DE): Univ. Press, 1999.

Ganzel, Dewey. Fortune in Men�s Eyes: The Career of John Payne Collier. Oxford: Univ. Press, 1982.

Goldstone, Lawrence and Nancy. Warmly Inscribed: The New England Forger and Other Book Tales. New York: St. Martin�s Press, 2001.

Grafton, Anthony. Forgers and Critics: Creativity and Duplicity in Western Scholarship. Princeton: Univ. Press, 1990.

Hamilton, Charles. Great Forgeries and Famous Fakes. Lakewood (CO): Glenbridge Publishing, Ltd., 1996.

Hamilton, Charles. Scribblers and Scoundrels. New York: Paul S. Ericsson, 1968.

Hamilton, Charles. The Hitler Diaries: Fakes that Fooled the World. Lexington (KY): Univ. Press, 1991.

Innes, Brian. Fakes and Forgeries. Pleasantville (NY): Readers Digest, 2005.

Jones, Mark. Fake? The Art of Deception. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1990.

Myers, Robin and Michael Harris. Fakes and Frauds: Varieties of Deception in Print and Manuscript. New Castle (DE): Oak Knoll Press, 1989.

Newton, A. Edward. The Amenities of Book Collecting. Boston: The Atlantic Monthly Press, 1918.

Newton, A. Edward. This Book-Collecting Game. Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1928.

Nickell, Joe. Detecting Forgery. Lexington (KY): Univ. Press, 1996.

Nickell, Joe. Pen, Ink, and Evidence: A Study of Writing and Writing Materials for the Penman, Collector, and Document Detective. New Castle (DE): Oak Knoll Press, 2003.

Osborn, Albert S. The Problem of Proof Especially as Exemplified in Disputed Document Trials. Nelson-Hall Co., 1946 [1976].

Osborn, Albert S. Questioned Documents. Chicago: Nelson-Hall Co., 1946 [1976].

Pierce, Patricia. The Great Shakespeare Fraud: The Strange, True Story of William Henry Ireland. Stroud (UK): Sutton Publishing, 2004.

Rosenblum, Joseph. Practice to Deceive: The Amazing Stories of Literary Forgeries Most Notorious Practitioners. New Castle (DE): Oak Knoll Press, 2000.

Ruthven, K.K. Faking Literature. Cambridge (UK): Univ. Press, 2001.

Sommer, Robin L. Great Cons and Con Artists. Philadelphia: Running Press Book Publishers, 1994.

Spenser, Ronald V. The Expert Versus the Object. Oxford: Univ. Press, 2004.

Whitehead, John. This Solemn Mockery: The Art of Literary Forgery. London: Arlington Books, 1973.

Worrall, Simon. The Poet and the Murderer: A True Story of Literary Crime and the Art of Forgery. New York: Penguin Group, 2002.

Stephen R. Pastore has just written a novel entitled GUILT which will be published next year.

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	02
2007	2008	2019

A Collection of Forgeries and Hoaxes

University of Scranton Exhibition

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