literary forgery and fraud

This page considers literary forgery and fraud.

It covers -

• introduction
• poetry
• Shakespeare
• contemporary media circuses
• memorabilia

     introduction

As Anthony Grafton notes in his perceptive Forgers & Critics: Creativity & Duplicity in Western Scholarship (Princeton: Princeton Uni Press 1990), literary forgery has had a long and often distinguished history in most parts of the world, whether to

• substantiate or undermine claims to political legitimacy or cultural superiority
• demonstrate the esprit and skill of the forger in eras where originality was less valued and a framework for assessing provenance was emerging
• undermine the pretensions of scholars and other authorities
• gather renown to the 'discoverer' of the text
• generate financial and other rewards for the forger, particularly in environments where the forged text catered to market expectations (eg revealed the supposedly scandalous life of Marie Antoinette) or simply offered the shock of the new (eg recurrent versions of the 'Hitler' and 'Mussolini' Diaries)

Three introductions are Robin Fakes & Frauds: Varieties of Deception In Print & Manuscript (New Castle: Oak Knoll Press 1996) by Robin Myers, John Whitehead's This Solemn Mockery:
The Art of Literary Forgery (London: Arlington Books 1973) and Practice To Deceive (New Castle: Oak Knoll Press 2000) by Joseph Rosenblum.

     poetry

Unsuccessful Scots poet James Macpherson (1736-1796) first gained public attention with his 1760 Fragments of Ancient Poetry, Collected in the Highlands of Scotland, and Translated from the Galic or Erse Language. He announced that

Though the poems now published appear as detached pieces in this collection," he wrote, "there is ground to believe that most of them were originally episodes of a greater work ... by a careful inquiry, many more remains of ancient genius, no less valuable than those now given to the world, might be found in the same country where these have been collected. In particular there is reason to hope that one work of considerable length, and which deserves to be styled an heroic poem, might be recovered and translated, if encouragement were given to such an undertaking.

Macpherson duly discovered verse epics Fingal and Temora, attributed to Gaelic bard Ossian. His translations inspired an Ossian craze that included Goethe and Napoleon Bonaparte among its devotees. He responded to criticisms by Samuel Johnson and others by producing forged Gaelic documents that purported to authenticate his work. Johnson was also dismissive of George Psalmanazar (c 1680-1763), supposed visitor to Formosa and author of a 'chinese' grammar.

A few years later apprentice Thomas Chatterton (1752-1770) discovered a cache of 'medieval' poems and historical documents attributed to Sir Thomas Rowley. He attracting further attention after deciding, in the style of James Dean, that death at 18 was a good career move - being immortalised by Keats and other exponents of the Romantic moment.

Chatterton's concentration on writing by dead white males was more wholesome than the swag of supposed contemporary memoirs, diaries and collections of correspondence from figures such as Marie Antoinette and Cardinal Richelieu. Those forgeries haven't attracted significant modern attention but in their time were best sellers, along with forgettable tracts such the 1836 Awful Disclosures autobiography of Maria Monk and Frederick Lullin de Chateauvieux's 1817 Manuscript Transmitted from St Helena, by An Unknown Channel, a supposed memoir by the former Emperor specifically denounced in Napoleon's will.

For 'Ossian' and Chatterton see in particular Ian Haywood's The Making of History: A Study of the Literary Forgeries of James Macpherson & Thomas Chatterton in Relation to Eighteenth-Century Ideals of History and Fiction (London: Associated Uni Press 1986), The Sublime Savage: A Study of James Macpherson and the Poems of Ossian (Edinburgh: Edinburgh Uni Press 1988) by Fiona Stafford, Ossian Revisited (Edinburgh: Edinburgh Uni Press 1991) edited by Howard Gaskill and Robert Browning's Essay on Chatterton (Westport: Greenwood 1970) edited by Donald Smalley.

There is a more relaxed account in Peter Ackroyd's novel Chatterton (London: Hamish Hamilton 1987). Paul Baines' The House of Forgery in 18th-century Britain (Aldershott: Ashgate 1999) considers contemporary notions of authenticity, creativity and reward.

     Shakespeare

In 1794 William Henry Ireland (1777–1835) manufactured a deed bearing the signature of William Shakespeare and went on to 'discover' Shakespeare's love letters to Anne Hathaway (complete with a lock of the playwright's hair), correspondence with Elizabeth I, annotated books from Shakespeare's library, a partial Hamlet manuscript and the manuscript for his Vortigern & Rowena.

That play was duly performed by Edmund Kean, the Kenneth Branagh of the 1790s, before Ireland was brilliantly exposed by scholar Edmond Malone (1741-1812).

In 1852 scholar John Payne Collier (1789–1883) announced discovery of a copy of the Shakespeare Second Folio with extensive manuscript annotations and corrections by the author. He also forged other documents, inserting forged ballads, lists and 'autographs' in genuine 16th and 17th century books. Somewhat more tongue in cheek, James Whitcomb Riley floated Leonainie in 1877 as an 'undiscovered' Edgar Allan Poe poem

Twenty years on bibliographer Thomas Wise and associates began to 'discover' hitherto unknown first editions of works by Browning and other literary notables, just the thing for the acquisitive counterparts of the dot-com millionaires.

Edmund Backhouse - the 'Hermit of Peking' - manufactured Chinese imperial memoirs such as The Diary of His Excellency Ching-shan, correspondence and even reference works during a career that featured arms dealing, financial swindles and donation of 17,000 items to the Bodleian Library.

Dewey Ganzel's Fortune & Men's Eyes: The Career of John Payne Collier (Oxford: Oxford Uni Press 1982) is a definitive study. For Ireland see Bernard Grebanier's The Great Shakespeare Forgery: A New Look at the Career of William Henry Ireland (New York: Norton 1965).  For Wise see 'Thomas James Wise and Harry Buxton Forman' in John Carter & Graham Pollard's An Enquiry into the Nature of Certain Nineteenth-Century Pamphlets (London: Scolar Press 1983) and John Collins' The Two Forgers (Aldershot: Scolar Press 1992), superseding Thomas J. Wise Centenary Studies (Edinburgh: Nelson 1959) edited by William Todd.

For Backhouse see Hugh Trevor-Roper's Hermit of Peking: The Hidden Life of Sir Edmund Backhouse (New York: Knopf 1977).

     media circuses

During the late 1940s and 50s a wave of diaries, letters and other material attributed to figures such as Mussolini and Hitler appeared on the market. During 1957 for example a mother and daughter produced thirty volumes of what they claimed were Benito Mussolini's diaries, apparently fooling the dictator's son and an expert, who exclaimed that

Thirty volumes of manuscript cannot be the work of a forger, but of a genius

In the 1970s author Clifford Irving, fresh from the gonzo-ish Fake: The Story of Elmyr de Hory, the Greatest Art Forger of Our Time (New York: McGraw-Hill 1969), manufactured memoirs attributed to the reclusive Howard Hughes. Following Hughes' death a forged Hughes Last Will & Testament surfaced, the beginning of what became known as the 'Mormon Will Case' depicted in the film Melvin & Howard.

A decade later it was the turn of Adolf Hitler, with a media circus around authentication, publication and exposure in 1983 of crude fake diaries from Konrad Kujau. Most of the text didn't go beyond such gems as

Meet all the leaders of the Storm troopers in Bavaria, give them medals.

Must not forget tickets for the Olympic games for Eva.

The affair severely tarnished the reputation of Backhouse and Hitler expert Hugh Trevor-Roper ("I'm staking my reputation on it") but boosted sales for Murdoch's News group. One publisher commented

Hitler sells. Nazis sell. Swastikas sell - and they sell
better and better ... I've even thought of putting one on our vegetable cookbook because Hitler was a vegetarian.

Stephen Berry quipped

In this light the major question concerning Kujau must be the same as that for Hitler. Not, how did he manage to get so far? Rather, how in the end could he possibly have failed?

Ironically, on his release from prison Kujau declared that he would write his memoirs but denounced The Originality of Forgery published under his name in 1998 as itself a forgery, declaring "I did not write one line of this book."

In 1976 University of Arizona Press published I Married Wyatt Earp, the supposed memoir by the wife of US gunslinger Wyatt Earp. In 1993 six missing Haydn sonatas were 'discovered', authenticated, recorded and then exposed as modern, leading Haydn expert H Robbins Landon to comment

It's the most brilliant fraud ... I don't mind being taken in by music this good. It's what Haydn would have written in this key at this time.

In the closing years of last century Mark Hofmann, apparently tired to discovering autograph works by Washington, Lincoln and religious figures, 'found' an undiscovered poem by Emily Dickinson. The author of 1976 best-seller The Education of Little Tree, the supposed memoir of a Cherokee orphan, merely discovered a new personality - one far removed from past authorship of the 1963 George Wallace speech 'Segregation Now! Segregation Tomorrow! Segregation Forever!'.

Lawrence Cusack was convicted in 1999 for forging and selling supposed JF Kennedy papers from 1993 onwards, culminating in initial acceptance by journalist Seymour Hersh - for his 1997 The Dark Side of Camelot - that  Kennedy had established a US$600,000 trust fund for Marilyn Monroe's mother.

For Irving see Stephen Fay, Lewis Chester & Magnus Linklater's Hoax: The Inside Story of the Howard Hughes-Clifford Irving Affair (London: Deutsch 1972) and Irving's exculpatory What Really Happened: The Untold Story of the Hughes Affair (New York: Grove Press 1972). The 'Mormon Will' Affair is described in James Phelan & Lewis Chester's The Money: The Battle for Howard Hughes's Billions (New York: Random House 1997).

For the 'Hitler Diaries' see in particular Andrew Harris' sparkling Selling Hitler (London: Faber 1987), Charles Hamilton's The Hitler Diaries: Fakes That Fooled the World (Lexington: Uni of Kentucky Press 1991) and Philip Knightley's A Hack's Progress (London: Cape 1997).

Hofmann's 'discovery' of a Dickinson poem is described in The Poet and the Murderer: A True Story of Literary Crime and the Art of Forgery (London: 4th Estate 2003) by Simon Worrall. Hofmann's religious forgeries are discussed in a later page of this profile. Warmly Inscribed: The New England Forger & Other Book Tales (New York: St Martins 2001) by Lawrence & Nancy Goldstone considers other US manuscript and book frauds.

     memorabilia

Everyone, it seems, wants to own a little bit of history - whether that's a letter from Jack the Ripper or from Cleopatra - and as we noted in the introduction to this profile the contemporary market has been fuelled by online marketplaces such as eBay.

A highlight was Vrain-Denis Lucas's manufacture of around 27,000 letters - snapped up by collectors - from notables such as Mary Magdalene, Cleopatra, Julius Caesar and Lazarus (all of whom apparently wrote in French and used modern paper). A sparkling contemporary account of that industry and credulity is provided in Henri Bordier & Emile Mabille's Prince of Forgers (New Castle: Oak Knoll 1998).

The literature on the manufacture of memorabilia is extensive. Highlights include Texfake : An Account of the Theft & Forgery of Early Texas Printed Documents  (New Castle: Oak Knoll Press 1997) by Thomas Taylor and Forging History: The Detection of Fake Letters & Documents (Tulsa: Uni of Oklahoma Press 1994) by Kenneth Rendell.

   next page  (currency)