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The Book Forger: The True Story of a Literary Crime that Fooled the World
London, 1932. Thomas James Wise is the toast of the literary establishment. A prominent collector and businessman, he is renowned on both sides of the Atlantic for unearthing the most stunning first editions and bringing them to market. Pompous and fearsome, with friends in high places, he is one of the most powerful men in the field of rare books. One night, two young booksellers - one a dishevelled former communist, the other a martini-swilling fan of detective stories - stumble upon a strange discrepancy. It will lead them to suspect Wise and his books are not all they seem. Inspired by the vogue for Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes, the pair harness the latest developments in forensic analysis to crack the case, but find its extent is greater than they ever could have imagined. By the time they are done, their investigation will have rocked the book world to its core. This is the true story of unlikely friends coming together to expose the literary crime of the century, and of a maverick bibliophile who forged not only books but an entire life, erasing his past along the way.
321 pages, Hardcover
First published June 1, 2024
37 people are currently reading
752 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 29 of 29 reviews
May 13, 2024
interesting book about the search for literacy forger of the late 19th century interwoven with historical documentary reads like a detective novel.
June 11, 2024
In 1922 Thomas James Wise was elected President of the Bibliographical Society of London, the most prestigious book society in England. He was also one of forty members of the Roxburghe Club, the most exclusive club of book collectors in the world. He was a successful businessman and a recognized expert on the works of Swinburne, Robert Browning and other authors of that period. He was also the most productive and successful book forger in English history.
Joseph Hone knows how to tell this story. He traces Wise's first forgeries. He had a compliant printer produce short pamphlets which were supposed to be previously unknown works by well-known authors. His most audacious forgery was a previously unknown first printing of Eliazbeth Barrett Browning's "Sonnets from the Portuguese".
The books were printed on appropriately aged papers. They fooled everyone when they were released. Wise wove elaborate stories of how he uncovered these previously unknown works. He at times would distribute them through other booksellers. He used his scholarly authority to convince doubters. He published a trail of forged books from 1886 up into the 1920s with complete success.
Hone traces the lives of the two bookmen who caught Wise. Henry Pollard was a large shambling man. He was an Oxford graduate, a member of the Communist Party in England and later an informant on the party. He was a committed/obsessive book collector and dealer. John Carter was a tall elegantly dressed book dealer. He was a Cambridge graduate with an interest in mystery stories.
In the late 1920s both Pollard and Carter realized that they had doubts about the Barrett sonnet edition. They joined forces. Hone traces the patient and detailed work they did to eventually uncover inarguable evidence of fraud. They then gradually began to discover a series of frauds. They eventually discovered that the common link to all of these frauds was Wise.
The tale of the slow tightening of the noose around Wise and his multiple attempts to avoid responsibility is an exciting well told story. Hone is also is very good on Wise's attempts to be accepted by the English upper class and the effect of class on the discovery of the fraud. It helped that the debunkers were Oxford and Cambridge grads. There were discoveries after Wise died of his straight out thefts from the British Library and others.
Hone is very good at explaining clearly the techniques used to commit the frauds and to discover them.
This is a well written and exciting book.
Joseph Hone knows how to tell this story. He traces Wise's first forgeries. He had a compliant printer produce short pamphlets which were supposed to be previously unknown works by well-known authors. His most audacious forgery was a previously unknown first printing of Eliazbeth Barrett Browning's "Sonnets from the Portuguese".
The books were printed on appropriately aged papers. They fooled everyone when they were released. Wise wove elaborate stories of how he uncovered these previously unknown works. He at times would distribute them through other booksellers. He used his scholarly authority to convince doubters. He published a trail of forged books from 1886 up into the 1920s with complete success.
Hone traces the lives of the two bookmen who caught Wise. Henry Pollard was a large shambling man. He was an Oxford graduate, a member of the Communist Party in England and later an informant on the party. He was a committed/obsessive book collector and dealer. John Carter was a tall elegantly dressed book dealer. He was a Cambridge graduate with an interest in mystery stories.
In the late 1920s both Pollard and Carter realized that they had doubts about the Barrett sonnet edition. They joined forces. Hone traces the patient and detailed work they did to eventually uncover inarguable evidence of fraud. They then gradually began to discover a series of frauds. They eventually discovered that the common link to all of these frauds was Wise.
The tale of the slow tightening of the noose around Wise and his multiple attempts to avoid responsibility is an exciting well told story. Hone is also is very good on Wise's attempts to be accepted by the English upper class and the effect of class on the discovery of the fraud. It helped that the debunkers were Oxford and Cambridge grads. There were discoveries after Wise died of his straight out thefts from the British Library and others.
Hone is very good at explaining clearly the techniques used to commit the frauds and to discover them.
This is a well written and exciting book.
April 3, 2024
This is a good book. It’s very interesting and contains a hugely detailed overview of fraud born from innocence and driven by greed and desire for status. A good introduction to book selling, collecting and bibliophiles.
The writing is sometimes confusing and the flow could be more clear, and towards the end the stories coverage and it becomes easier to follow. Interesting and unique!
The writing is sometimes confusing and the flow could be more clear, and towards the end the stories coverage and it becomes easier to follow. Interesting and unique!
June 16, 2024
I'd never heard of this historical case of book forgery before and enjoyed my time learning about it, as well as the book trade and book collecting between 1880 and the 1930s. The author did an admirable job of showing how the greed for first editions of modern authors not only seduced one man, but also offered him the chance of becoming an eminent authority in the field by forging many of them.
While parts of these crimes really did seem to be a more or less victimless crime given that it resulted in rich men having to pay high prices for possibly forged books, the way Thomas James Wise went about authenticating his forgeries really made my skin crawl. He used anyone and everyone he met for his own gains and often deceived them and stole from them in some way. The times he met still living eminent authors or their families, he deceived them about works that had been published, sewing doubts about events of their own lives. The last straw for me was his destruction of rare books in the British Library. My jaw nearly dropped when I read that.
This book made me feel like I got to know Wise and his motivations, as well as how Carter and Pollard came to investigate the suspected forgeries. I really enjoyed my time in this little corner of the past.
That being said, I do think that this book is at least 50 pages too long. I don't know if the book was supposed to have a certain page length, or if the author wanted to show off his in-depth research to the fullest, but the first 100 pages particularly really dragged at times. I appreciate that the author wanted to set up the biographies of Wise, Carter and Pollard in particular, but there was just too much about the backstory of Pollard in particular. Some of it was interesting and pertinent to the investigation, but I really didn't need to read chapters and chapters about his young adulthoold and him meeting his wife. Additionally, the descriptions of the book trade at the time were also quite lengthy. Again, it did give good context, but there was really no need for pages of descriptions which bookseller had their shops where and which books they sold to which people. Once I finally got to the part with the start of the investigation, I was hooked and didn't want to put it down for the last 100 pages.
Overall, I enjoyed my time with this book in general, even though the first 100 pages did drag at times. I definitely now know a lot more about forgery, book collecting and trading than I did before!
While parts of these crimes really did seem to be a more or less victimless crime given that it resulted in rich men having to pay high prices for possibly forged books, the way Thomas James Wise went about authenticating his forgeries really made my skin crawl. He used anyone and everyone he met for his own gains and often deceived them and stole from them in some way. The times he met still living eminent authors or their families, he deceived them about works that had been published, sewing doubts about events of their own lives. The last straw for me was his destruction of rare books in the British Library. My jaw nearly dropped when I read that.
This book made me feel like I got to know Wise and his motivations, as well as how Carter and Pollard came to investigate the suspected forgeries. I really enjoyed my time in this little corner of the past.
That being said, I do think that this book is at least 50 pages too long. I don't know if the book was supposed to have a certain page length, or if the author wanted to show off his in-depth research to the fullest, but the first 100 pages particularly really dragged at times. I appreciate that the author wanted to set up the biographies of Wise, Carter and Pollard in particular, but there was just too much about the backstory of Pollard in particular. Some of it was interesting and pertinent to the investigation, but I really didn't need to read chapters and chapters about his young adulthoold and him meeting his wife. Additionally, the descriptions of the book trade at the time were also quite lengthy. Again, it did give good context, but there was really no need for pages of descriptions which bookseller had their shops where and which books they sold to which people. Once I finally got to the part with the start of the investigation, I was hooked and didn't want to put it down for the last 100 pages.
Overall, I enjoyed my time with this book in general, even though the first 100 pages did drag at times. I definitely now know a lot more about forgery, book collecting and trading than I did before!
May 2, 2024
A well written and researched book. An interesting read on book production also history and how this was used for forgery.
July 7, 2025
This account of an English book forger almost reads like an old-fashioned Sherlock Holmes or Hercules Poirot novel, complete with counterfeits, clues, amateur detectives, spies, and forensic analysis — except that it’s all true.
This non-fiction work traces the rise and fall of Thomas James Wise, a well-respected bibliophile and book collector who was eventually outed in 1934 as a thief and forger by two young amateur sleuths.
The author did admirable research re-constructing the backgrounds of the three men — in fact, almost too much at times. The first half of the book reads slowly due to the over-abundance of biographical detail, but picks up once he finally starts relating the investigation
Very interesting and informative, once you actually get to the sleuthing part.
This non-fiction work traces the rise and fall of Thomas James Wise, a well-respected bibliophile and book collector who was eventually outed in 1934 as a thief and forger by two young amateur sleuths.
The author did admirable research re-constructing the backgrounds of the three men — in fact, almost too much at times. The first half of the book reads slowly due to the over-abundance of biographical detail, but picks up once he finally starts relating the investigation
Very interesting and informative, once you actually get to the sleuthing part.
July 7, 2024
Absolutely Brilliant
My Book Of The Year
If U Love Books
Read This
My Book Of The Year
If U Love Books
Read This
May 24, 2024
How would you go about creating fake provenance for rare books and how could you pass off facsimiles as genuine originals? This book tells all, as well as how the forger was unmasked. Well researched, interesting and at times quite mind-boggling.
May 19, 2024
It’s both well researched and hugely entertaining. The author has a real knack for story telling. It’s non-fiction that reads like fiction while also teaching you a lot about book history.
July 3, 2024
If you enjoy a good heist, Golden Age detective fiction, spy stories and mysteries, you'll love this! A proper page-turner, meticulously researched. Loved it!
July 3, 2025
I consider myself an avid reader, but only a moderate bibliophile. That is: I like/love beautiful books, nice paper, easy-to-read fonts, elegant bindings-but I have no special desire to possess such objects. Still, I have enough kinship with the folks that populate this story to find it interesting. As a matter of fact, there's something entertaining about watching, with some detachment, two parties sling it out on a topic that is of just enough, but not too much, interest.
And so this is a book about Thomas Wise, Victorian bibliophile, bibliographer - and book forger. Truly a story of the fox guarding the hen house : his indisputable knowledge of the early Victorian poets endowed him with the authority to pronounce that such or such newly discovered edition of this or that poem was genuine - and thus worth a bundle. He claimed personal acquaintance with some poets (Swinburne), or aquaintance with a friend of a poet, thus providing plausible origin stories for the newly discovered "first" editions that he would bring to the market. The publication mores of those days supported this type of fraud, in the sense that it was habitual for authors to run off a couple of special copies for their friends and supporters, with no one really keeping track of what was printed where and when.
And so Thomas Wise has a nice run at the top of the bibliophilic hierarchy, complete with memberships in prestigious clubs and a presidency of a respected society. But in the 1930s this came to an end, when 2 young booksellers became aware of certain discrepancies, not just in the purely bibliographical sense, but even more in the scientific investigation of some suspected booklets. The wrong type of paper. A font that had not yet been invented when a pamphlet was supposed printed. Just like those criminals who are found out 20 years after their crime because of DNA sequencing of old, stored biosamples, Thomas Wise had not counted on the development of these new technologies that would point towards his fakery decades later.
The story was never 100 % resolved, because Thomas Wise continued to deny the forgery (despite mounting evidence) and eventually died without a confession.
As I said, I don't really get all that excited about typography, and the poetry of Browning, Barrett Browning, Swinburne and their contemporaries leaves me cold. But I did enjoy the atmosphere of the book: dusty bookshops, the reading room of the British Museum, tea by the fire. An enjoyable read.
And so this is a book about Thomas Wise, Victorian bibliophile, bibliographer - and book forger. Truly a story of the fox guarding the hen house : his indisputable knowledge of the early Victorian poets endowed him with the authority to pronounce that such or such newly discovered edition of this or that poem was genuine - and thus worth a bundle. He claimed personal acquaintance with some poets (Swinburne), or aquaintance with a friend of a poet, thus providing plausible origin stories for the newly discovered "first" editions that he would bring to the market. The publication mores of those days supported this type of fraud, in the sense that it was habitual for authors to run off a couple of special copies for their friends and supporters, with no one really keeping track of what was printed where and when.
And so Thomas Wise has a nice run at the top of the bibliophilic hierarchy, complete with memberships in prestigious clubs and a presidency of a respected society. But in the 1930s this came to an end, when 2 young booksellers became aware of certain discrepancies, not just in the purely bibliographical sense, but even more in the scientific investigation of some suspected booklets. The wrong type of paper. A font that had not yet been invented when a pamphlet was supposed printed. Just like those criminals who are found out 20 years after their crime because of DNA sequencing of old, stored biosamples, Thomas Wise had not counted on the development of these new technologies that would point towards his fakery decades later.
The story was never 100 % resolved, because Thomas Wise continued to deny the forgery (despite mounting evidence) and eventually died without a confession.
As I said, I don't really get all that excited about typography, and the poetry of Browning, Barrett Browning, Swinburne and their contemporaries leaves me cold. But I did enjoy the atmosphere of the book: dusty bookshops, the reading room of the British Museum, tea by the fire. An enjoyable read.
September 19, 2025
I listened to this as an audiobook and the narrator (Thomas Judd) is phenomenal.
It was entertaining, though I'm not sure how much I learned. Finished it in a day. Usually I get through about an hour of a nonfiction audiobook before I need a break. I didn't want a break from this one.
That being said, I usually take a lot of notes and stop and rewind most audiobooks. For this one, not so much.
I have a slight desire to read Swinburne (obsessed with flagellation and cannibalism). I heard the names of Browning and Tennyson and Shelley a lot.
I learned a bit about the history of 19th century paper production and the chemical analysis thereof.
I’ll sleep on it to try to get more out of this book, but at present I’m not too impressed.
It was entertaining, though I'm not sure how much I learned. Finished it in a day. Usually I get through about an hour of a nonfiction audiobook before I need a break. I didn't want a break from this one.
That being said, I usually take a lot of notes and stop and rewind most audiobooks. For this one, not so much.
I have a slight desire to read Swinburne (obsessed with flagellation and cannibalism). I heard the names of Browning and Tennyson and Shelley a lot.
I learned a bit about the history of 19th century paper production and the chemical analysis thereof.
I’ll sleep on it to try to get more out of this book, but at present I’m not too impressed.
September 19, 2025
Riveting account of the forging of supposed first editions of mainly English poetry by a leading literary figure who started his career as a young man managing the production of legitimate facsimile editions of scarce works. He made his fortune out of the enterprise before being unmasked by a couple of hound booksellers who meticulously gathered the evidence together. The forger never admitted his crimes and with unbelievable chutzpah, before he died persuaded the British Museum to buy his own collection of books, despite surely knowing that they would discover that, on top of his forging, he had been stealing pages from their own books to repair his copies.
As much as page turner as any crime fiction I’ve ever read!
As much as page turner as any crime fiction I’ve ever read!
December 7, 2025
This book suffers from what I call the Bill Bryson problem, to wit, there are few authors that can turn anything into a good book and sadly this author is not one of them.
This isn't a bad book, it's interesting and well written but sometimes it does go into some incredible amount of detail that unless you are really into late 19th century literature AND book collection is probably too much.
It would be a better book if it were 50 pages shorter.
3.5 stars really
This isn't a bad book, it's interesting and well written but sometimes it does go into some incredible amount of detail that unless you are really into late 19th century literature AND book collection is probably too much.
It would be a better book if it were 50 pages shorter.
3.5 stars really
September 16, 2025
This is more of a 3.5 star read. The story of the forger and the two men trying to unmask him is quite interesting. There are a couple of side stories that to me didn't add anything to the book. Quite a complex set of lies to keep everything straight!
July 2, 2024
How it's done.
How it's revealed.
The story of how without the why.
How it's revealed.
The story of how without the why.
August 19, 2024
I was fascinated and learnt a lot while reading it. I can therefore highly recommend the book.
August 30, 2024
A true story that reads like fiction, definitely recommend :)
Read
October 20, 2024Didn't finish
February 11, 2025
Very slow to get going but really interesting, what an intricate crime
February 22, 2025
(audiobook)
July 26, 2025
This was surprisingly enjoyable, and I learned a lot about late Victorian printing! Longer review to come!
September 25, 2025
I almost wish I had read this before I read Possession by A.S. Byatt, because that book owes so much to the historic events Hone outlines so well here.
October 18, 2025
I never pick up non-fiction but this one caught my eye during a slow day at the library and so I gave it a try. I liked the writing style and it was an intriguing read.
May 16, 2024
For my full review click on the link below:
https://crossexaminingcrime.wordpress...
https://crossexaminingcrime.wordpress...
July 9, 2024
A fascinating story that's almost too strange to be true - how two young booksellers and aspiring detectives teamed up to expose the revered and celebrated bibliographer Thomas J. Wise. When suspiciously clean and neat first edition pamphlets and books suddenly flood the market, Carter and Pollard must not only prove that Wise is responsible, but also convince the book world of his treachery as well as uncover his motives for forging and stealing books.The novel is a slow burner with an ending that's a bit hurried, but the story is engrossing.
October 12, 2024
EXCELLENT IN SOME PLACES bland as a cardboard in others. Appreciated how they made it feel like a thriller and a big mystery whilst being incredibly informative. I enjoyed hearing more about classic literature and poetry, it made me look up some things and I’m now a more well rounded reader for it :)
August 24, 2024
An interesting true story, written in a way to keep you hooked with twists and turns
Displaying 1 - 29 of 29 reviews