Practice to Deceive: The Incredible Story of Literary Forgery's Most Notorious Practitioners

by Joseph Rosenblum

The profiles of six literary forgers from 1700 to 1988. The profiles include William Henry Ireland, who wrote an entire play by Shakespeare; Vrain Denis Lucas, who composed letters from Plato, Cleopatra, and other historical figures in modern French; and Mark David Hoffman, who fabricated the history of Mormonism by "finding" numerous letters from Joseph Smith, Brigham Young, and others. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Genres: Nonfiction

Hardcover

First published May 1, 2000

Reviews

[Michael]

Pretty amazing, really...what some will go out of their way to do. Had I not taken a Literary Forgery course at U of M - Flint, I may still have no idea of this practice.

[Stephen Sorensen]

This is one of the best scholarly compilations of the most popular cases of literary forgery. While the main body of the book focuses on literary forgery from the 1700s to 1900s, the introduction provides a succinct account of literary forgery up to the 1700s.

I recommend this book and can see myself revisiting it again in the future.