Literary Forgeries, Fakes & Hoaxes: Four Studies

Four studies of literary forgeries, fakes and hoaxes:

Richard D. Altick, The Scholar Adventurers. Ohio State University Press, 1987.

ISBN 9780814204351 | 338 pages | PDF

Richard Altick’s classic portrayal of scholars on the prowl has delighted generations of readers. From the exposure of British rare book dealer Thomas Wise -- the most famous authority of his day -- as a master forger of first editions to the discovery of thousands of new James Boswell papers, Altick shows the scholar at work. Chaucer, Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats, and many others surrender previously unrevealed secrets to these dogged researchers, whose ceaseless sleuthing has increased our knowledge and appreciation of both literature and the people who created it.


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

ISBN 9780691055442 | 168 pages | PDF

Just as it "takes a thief to catch a thief," so the forger greatly aids the search for historical truth, maintains Anthony Grafton in this wide-ranging exploration of the links between forgery and scholarship. Labeling forgery the "criminal sibling" of criticism, he describes a panorama of remarkable individuals -- forgers, from classical Greece through the recent past, who produced a variety of splendid triumphs of learning and style, and scholarly detectives, who honed the tools of scholarship in attempts to unmask these skillful fakers. In the process he discloses the extent, the coherence, and the historical interest of two significant and tightly intertwined strands in the Western intellectual tradition. "The desire to forge," writes the author, "can bite and infect almost anyone: . . . the honest as well as the rogue." Forgers are inspired not only by ambition or greed but also by impulses to play jokes, exuberant desires to see the past made whole again, or serious wishes to invoke divine or distantly historical authority for particular spiritual or national traditions. Whatever their goals, forgers in classical antiquity as well as in the modern era have often been well ahead of critics in the pursuit of methods of authenticating documents, and Grafton shows that many techniques normally considered the invention of scholars in early modern Europe were already employed in classical times.


Robin Myers and Michael Harris, eds., Fakes and Frauds: Varieties of Deception in Print and Manuscript. St. Paul's Bibliographies & Oak Knoll Press, 1989.

ISBN 9781884718311 | 144 pages | PDF

When there have been opportunities for profit from deception, there have always been people ready to engage in sharp practice and ready to perpetrate fakes and frauds. These essays throw light on some of the more shadowy areas of book trade history, revealing tricksters, villains -- even murderers -- who have practiced deception in the written and printed word, from the 12th century to very recent times. Fakes & Frauds includes chapters on "The Forgery of Printed Documents" by Nicolas Barker, "Forged Handwriting" by Tom Davis and "Paper Pirates" by Michael Harris. This book also covers aspects of all the great forgers including Wise, Prokosch, Hofmann and others.


K. K. Ruthven, Faking Literature. Cambridge University Press, 2001.

ISBN 9780521660150 | 248 pages | PDF

Literary forgeries are usually regarded as spurious versions of genuine literature. Faking Literature argues that the production of a literary forgery is an act that reveals the spurious nature of literature itself. Literature has long been under attack because of its alliance with rhetoric (the art of persuasion) rather than with logic and ethics. One way of deflecting such attacks is to demonize literary forgery: literature acquires the illusion of authenticity by being dissociated from what are represented as ersatz approximations of the real thing.


* For readers interested in reading more on literary forgeries, see the excellent bibliography of books on the subject at http://www.bibliopath.com/forgebib.html

* For the purported biblical forgery of The Secret Gospel of Mark, see my earlier upload at https://kat.ph/the-secret-gospel-of-mark-a-biblical-forgery-t7191808.html