The Forger's Shadow

by Nick Groom

Whilst defining the very meaning of forgery, Nick Groom ranges from the economic forgery of the 18th century, where the forgery of a #100 banknote could mean death by hanging, to the formation of literary copyright which was established not in order to protect the nation's authors but rather as a way of censoring them. haunted both our literature and our imaginations for years. There is Chatterton, the fatal model for the Romantic perceived as a mad, unrecognized and suicidal genius but one whose supposedly tragic life was as much a myth as the 15th-century monk he invented. Or there is Macpherson, constantly at war with Samuel Johnson, who edited (or wrote, or indeed forged) the lost epics of a 3rd-century Celtic bard. And there is the forger William Henry Ireland who not only wrote two new and disastrous Shakespeare plays but also forged a legal document to make sure he benefited from the royalties. Finally, there is the famous Wainewright who was a supreme forger in practically every sphere, whose effect on literature from Dickens to Wilde to the 21st century cannot be underestimated.

Genres: History

200 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2002

About the author

Nick Groom, known as the “Prof of Goth,” is professor of English at Exeter University, UK. His previous titles include The Gothic: A Very Short Introduction, and The Seasons: A Celebration of the English Year, which was shortlisted for the Katharine Briggs Folklore Award and came runner-up for BBC Countryfile Book of the Year.

Reviews

[Luke · Rating 2 out of 5]

I don't normally write throwaway reviews, but in this case I'm kind of compelled to as I feel reading this has left me with a mindset similar to that of a drained-battery talking toy: all slurred nonsense and encroaching entropy.

That's not what you want from something that, on the face of it, should be a ball-tearing recitation of forgery, counterfeit and outright literary bullshittery.

There's portraits of famed fakes, that's for sure: the early-dead Thomas Chatterton, the pugnacious James Macpherson, William Henry the Bard-fancier and poisoner Thomas Wainewright. But there's a feeling of overly-academic stultification to the copy, and it's difficult to follow a line through the text. Here's a sample sentence.

Chatterton was always pictured as a youth with shoulder-length hair rather than as a young buck in a peruke; he was pictured as bright-eyed, even goggle-eyed in one posthumous portrait; of course there was his opium eating and, like Adam in Eden, his vegetarianism.

And that's one of the better ones.

There's too much uncertainty, too much bolstering with literary theory. I spent the first third of the book waiting for the slack to be taken up, for excitement to build, and it didn't.

I gave this two stars because there is a goodly amount of research and reference in here. There's no doubt Groom has spent a lot of time researching his subjects: it's just that without the apparent hand of an editor, the book is unable to escape the author's weight of words.