What do you think?
Rate this book
Famous Impostors
He's best remembered as the legendary manager of London's Lyceum Theatre and author of the incalculably influential 1897 novel Dracula, but Bram Stoker was a prolific writer of numerous other works, including books of nonfiction. This curious 1910 work, one of his last, is an amusing survey of the charlatans, rogues, and other practitioners of make-believe who bedevil and delight us. With a cheerfully withering eye for their cons, Stoker introduces us to many famous fakers • royal pretenders (such as Perkin Warbeck, who claimed King Henry VII's throne) • magicians (Paracelsus, Cagliostro, etc.) • witches and clairvoyants • women masquerading as men • hoaxers • and others. Irish author ABRAHAM STOKER (1847-1912) worked for more than a quarter of a century as manager of the West End's Lyceum Theatre, which drew him into London's literary and artists circles; he was a friend of such luminaries as writer Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and painter James Abbott McNeill Whistler. Stoker is also the author of The Lair of the White Worm (1911), among other books.
398 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1910
57 people are currently reading
435 people want to read
About the author
Bram Stoker
2,605 books5,860 followersIrish-born Abraham Stoker, known as Bram, of Britain wrote the gothic horror novel
Dracula
(1897).
The feminist Charlotte Mathilda Blake Thornely Stoker at 15 Marino crescent, then as now called "the crescent," in Fairview, a coastal suburb of Dublin, Ireland, bore this third of seven children. The parents, members of church of Ireland, attended the parish church of Saint John the Baptist, located on Seafield road west in Clontarf with their baptized children.
Stoker, an invalid, started school at the age of seven years in 1854, when he made a complete and astounding recovery. Of this time, Stoker wrote, "I was naturally thoughtful, and the leisure of long illness gave opportunity for many thoughts which were fruitful according to their kind in later years."
After his recovery, he, a normal young man, even excelled as a university athlete at Trinity college, Dublin form 1864 to 1870 and graduated with honors in mathematics. He served as auditor of the college historical society and as president of the university philosophical society with his first paper on "Sensationalism in Fiction and Society."
In 1876, while employed as a civil servant in Dublin, Stoker wrote a non-fiction book (The Duties of Clerks of Petty Sessions in Ireland, published 1879) and theatre reviews for The Dublin Mail, a newspaper partly owned by fellow horror writer J. Sheridan Le Fanu. His interest in theatre led to a lifelong friendship with the English actor Henry Irving. He also wrote stories, and in 1872 "The Crystal Cup" was published by the London Society, followed by "The Chain of Destiny" in four parts in The Shamrock.
In 1878 Stoker married Florence Balcombe, a celebrated beauty whose former suitor was Oscar Wilde. The couple moved to London, where Stoker became business manager (at first as acting-manager) of Irving's Lyceum Theatre, a post he held for 27 years. The collaboration with Irving was very important for Stoker and through him he became involved in London's high society, where he met, among other notables, James McNeil Whistler, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. In the course of Irving's tours, Stoker got the chance to travel around the world.
The Stokers had one son, Irving Noel, who was born on December 31, 1879.
People cremated the body of Bram Stoker and placed his ashes placed in a display urn at Golders green crematorium. After death of Irving Noel Stoker in 1961, people added his ashes to that urn. Despite the original plan to keep ashes of his parents together, after death, people scattered ashes of Florence Stoker at the gardens of rest.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bram_Stoker
The feminist Charlotte Mathilda Blake Thornely Stoker at 15 Marino crescent, then as now called "the crescent," in Fairview, a coastal suburb of Dublin, Ireland, bore this third of seven children. The parents, members of church of Ireland, attended the parish church of Saint John the Baptist, located on Seafield road west in Clontarf with their baptized children.
Stoker, an invalid, started school at the age of seven years in 1854, when he made a complete and astounding recovery. Of this time, Stoker wrote, "I was naturally thoughtful, and the leisure of long illness gave opportunity for many thoughts which were fruitful according to their kind in later years."
After his recovery, he, a normal young man, even excelled as a university athlete at Trinity college, Dublin form 1864 to 1870 and graduated with honors in mathematics. He served as auditor of the college historical society and as president of the university philosophical society with his first paper on "Sensationalism in Fiction and Society."
In 1876, while employed as a civil servant in Dublin, Stoker wrote a non-fiction book (The Duties of Clerks of Petty Sessions in Ireland, published 1879) and theatre reviews for The Dublin Mail, a newspaper partly owned by fellow horror writer J. Sheridan Le Fanu. His interest in theatre led to a lifelong friendship with the English actor Henry Irving. He also wrote stories, and in 1872 "The Crystal Cup" was published by the London Society, followed by "The Chain of Destiny" in four parts in The Shamrock.
In 1878 Stoker married Florence Balcombe, a celebrated beauty whose former suitor was Oscar Wilde. The couple moved to London, where Stoker became business manager (at first as acting-manager) of Irving's Lyceum Theatre, a post he held for 27 years. The collaboration with Irving was very important for Stoker and through him he became involved in London's high society, where he met, among other notables, James McNeil Whistler, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. In the course of Irving's tours, Stoker got the chance to travel around the world.
The Stokers had one son, Irving Noel, who was born on December 31, 1879.
People cremated the body of Bram Stoker and placed his ashes placed in a display urn at Golders green crematorium. After death of Irving Noel Stoker in 1961, people added his ashes to that urn. Despite the original plan to keep ashes of his parents together, after death, people scattered ashes of Florence Stoker at the gardens of rest.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bram_Stoker
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
Want to read
March 9, 2016Free download available at Project Gutenberg.
February 12, 2022
She's a man, baby!
This Stoker non-fiction work is pretty good: The initial stories weren't that interesting, but it picks up strongly in the back half when he starts talking about the numerous occasions of women pretending to be men (and sometimes "pretending" to be men, like Anne Bonney, maybe?) and then sort of peters out a bit when we get to the Queen Elizabeth part, for all that that was probably the "sizzle" to sell this.
Stoker's opinions add some flavor to the drier proceedings: For example, he judges John Law harshly not because he necessarily imputes bad intentions to the man, but that people who are in a position to enact crazy schemes that might destroy the economy have an attendant responsibility to exercise caution rather than doing things that might throw their countries into bloody revolutions.
Fair.
Meanwhile, he extends sympathy to an otherwise productive doctor who, in his later years, got sucked in (as many did) by an occult-oriented con-man and ended up with unwarranted notoriety.
It's a very judgy book. I'm okay with that.
I also liked the early bits about all the Louis the XVIIs that turned up after the death of the real one, my favorite being the last major claimant, a half-Native American.
As for the Bisley Boy? If you look around now, you'll see Stoker's name in conjunction with this, typically disparagingly, and that's really unfair. The Bisley Boy is a bit of folklore surrounding the enigmatic Elizabeth I, and why on earth would we—to the extent that we would care at all—want that gem lost? The story is good enough that you'd expect it to be written about fictionally, except it's precisely the sort of story Stoker himself would never write.
His case is not strong, but neither does he do much more than speculate on how it might have happened. Ultimately, Stoker is pro-Elizabeth I, whoever (s)he was. By contrast, the people refuting the theory seem to have a lot riding on it.
His two major contributions are, first, that a skeleton belonging to a girl of approximately the right age and dressed quite fancily was found in a stone coffin on the Bisley estate where Elizabeth was sent during the plague.
His second major contribution centers around the boy himself. The legend is that the real Elizabeth gets sick and dies and her attendees, for fear of Henry's retribution, look for a girl to replace her. Failing to find a replacement girl, they use a boy.
Stoker outlines the weakness of this theory: There has to be a boy around who can pass for Elizabeth, whose parents don't mind this exchange, whose absence isn't noticed. (You might think Henry VIII would notice or maybe one of his wives, but a fair claim can be made that none of them interacted much.) It's a tall order, right?
So, Stoker's contribution, entirely speculative by his own up-front admission, is that they didn't go wandering around the village looking for someone to fill-in for Elizabeth at all, but that there was someone there all along who fit the bill perfectly, and not by coincidence. In sum, Henry VIII did have a son who was being positioned to take over for him despite being illegitimate, and this son himself had a bastard son who had been hidden at Bisley!
The evidence is...well, it's not existent, really. But it's kind of fun. And there is a lot of hand-waving when it comes to QEI's eccentricities, which in these cynical times I'm inclined to regard as awareness of guilt. One of the arguments against is merely "that would mean the last four centuries of English royalty was built on a fraud!" To which I can only respond, "At least! It probably goes back to the beginning!" I'd be the opposite of shocked, is what I'm saying.
Of interest also is that this book (while almost certainly researched over many years) is Stoker's last non-fiction work, published in 1910, and he still seems to have had his wits about him (cf. Lair of the White Worm).
This Stoker non-fiction work is pretty good: The initial stories weren't that interesting, but it picks up strongly in the back half when he starts talking about the numerous occasions of women pretending to be men (and sometimes "pretending" to be men, like Anne Bonney, maybe?) and then sort of peters out a bit when we get to the Queen Elizabeth part, for all that that was probably the "sizzle" to sell this.
Stoker's opinions add some flavor to the drier proceedings: For example, he judges John Law harshly not because he necessarily imputes bad intentions to the man, but that people who are in a position to enact crazy schemes that might destroy the economy have an attendant responsibility to exercise caution rather than doing things that might throw their countries into bloody revolutions.
Fair.
Meanwhile, he extends sympathy to an otherwise productive doctor who, in his later years, got sucked in (as many did) by an occult-oriented con-man and ended up with unwarranted notoriety.
It's a very judgy book. I'm okay with that.
I also liked the early bits about all the Louis the XVIIs that turned up after the death of the real one, my favorite being the last major claimant, a half-Native American.
As for the Bisley Boy? If you look around now, you'll see Stoker's name in conjunction with this, typically disparagingly, and that's really unfair. The Bisley Boy is a bit of folklore surrounding the enigmatic Elizabeth I, and why on earth would we—to the extent that we would care at all—want that gem lost? The story is good enough that you'd expect it to be written about fictionally, except it's precisely the sort of story Stoker himself would never write.
His case is not strong, but neither does he do much more than speculate on how it might have happened. Ultimately, Stoker is pro-Elizabeth I, whoever (s)he was. By contrast, the people refuting the theory seem to have a lot riding on it.
His two major contributions are, first, that a skeleton belonging to a girl of approximately the right age and dressed quite fancily was found in a stone coffin on the Bisley estate where Elizabeth was sent during the plague.
His second major contribution centers around the boy himself. The legend is that the real Elizabeth gets sick and dies and her attendees, for fear of Henry's retribution, look for a girl to replace her. Failing to find a replacement girl, they use a boy.
Stoker outlines the weakness of this theory: There has to be a boy around who can pass for Elizabeth, whose parents don't mind this exchange, whose absence isn't noticed. (You might think Henry VIII would notice or maybe one of his wives, but a fair claim can be made that none of them interacted much.) It's a tall order, right?
So, Stoker's contribution, entirely speculative by his own up-front admission, is that they didn't go wandering around the village looking for someone to fill-in for Elizabeth at all, but that there was someone there all along who fit the bill perfectly, and not by coincidence. In sum, Henry VIII did have a son who was being positioned to take over for him despite being illegitimate, and this son himself had a bastard son who had been hidden at Bisley!
The evidence is...well, it's not existent, really. But it's kind of fun. And there is a lot of hand-waving when it comes to QEI's eccentricities, which in these cynical times I'm inclined to regard as awareness of guilt. One of the arguments against is merely "that would mean the last four centuries of English royalty was built on a fraud!" To which I can only respond, "At least! It probably goes back to the beginning!" I'd be the opposite of shocked, is what I'm saying.
Of interest also is that this book (while almost certainly researched over many years) is Stoker's last non-fiction work, published in 1910, and he still seems to have had his wits about him (cf. Lair of the White Worm).
November 22, 2016
That Queen Elisabeth I was an impostor could even be; that she was a "he"... well, that's too much, definitly!
February 28, 2021
This book consists of short biographical sketches of a number of different historical imposters along with a chapter on hoaxes. I find this kind of book interesting since it introduces you to people you might not necessarily have heard of otherwise. The final chapter is the most well known part of this book since it introduces the notion that Elizabeth I was actually a man. Stoker presents a textbook case in how to start a conspiracy theory: start with a slightly nutty idea, throw in just enough details to make it plausible, then insist you don't necessarily believe this story is true but you feel the need to present the "facts" so others can make up their own mind. It boils down to here's a string of near impossibilities that had to have occurred for Elizabeth to have been a man masquerading as a woman, but other people were able to hide their sex so it could have happened. He was told the story by people in a small village who hadn't mentioned it to anyone else in the intervening centuries. I'm sure they had a great laugh at his expense after he left town.
November 2, 2017
Hard to read
I couldn't get into this book at all. To much detail I couldn't understand a word of it. Didn't even know who I was actually reading about. Tried chapter two but just as bad as chapter three. I gave up after that.
I couldn't get into this book at all. To much detail I couldn't understand a word of it. Didn't even know who I was actually reading about. Tried chapter two but just as bad as chapter three. I gave up after that.
June 25, 2018
Interesting read. How true though is another question!
March 9, 2024
After the first three chapters it picks up. The beginning had so much detail and zero spice!
September 5, 2016
Why should the first book that I read by Bram Stoker be Dracula? Or the lesser known Lair of the White Worm?
It, of course, should be this volume of non-fiction secret history that is relatively unknown!
Regardless of "popularity," this was an interesting book. Stoker gives us a history of many instances of imposters--those who disguised themselves and passed for other people. These cases range from royalty--the most prominent case being the possibility of Queen Elizabeth not being queen at all--to lesser, upper-middle class people. There are also sections on hoaxes, witches and wizards, quack scientists, and women-disguised-as-men.
It's amazing how, in many of the cases of family members gone missing only to "reappear" again later, that people who formally knew the person, believed that the imposter was, indeed, their long-lost friend or relative. Stoker describes many instances where people had recorded that So-and-so looked nothing like they used to, but simply attributed it to maturity of the person. They didn't seem to question the possibility of an imposter at all.
Although it was interesting, some of the sections read like disjointed notes... like Stoker didn't bother to edit them or put them into a more chronological order before publishing. His style is also quite scholarly, so this isn't a casual non-fiction read, however it is well-worth the effort.
It may have been difficult for me to understand much of the relationships, mostly royal ones, because I'm not British or French (or European, for that matter) and have never learned or understood the complex hierarchy of royal families. When the same person is Duke of This, King of That, Prince of There, Earl of What--and cyclically referred to by all these names in the section--it gets very confusing for my American mind. This, combined with a lot of name dropping of people who didn't really need to be introduced, muddled my head and regardless of how many times I reread the section, I still couldn't keep some of the narratives straight as to who was who.
I was tempted to give this 2.5 stars because of some of the more difficult to understand passages, but figured 3 was quite fair, especially when taking into account the unique, quirky, secretive nature of the topic.
It, of course, should be this volume of non-fiction secret history that is relatively unknown!
Regardless of "popularity," this was an interesting book. Stoker gives us a history of many instances of imposters--those who disguised themselves and passed for other people. These cases range from royalty--the most prominent case being the possibility of Queen Elizabeth not being queen at all--to lesser, upper-middle class people. There are also sections on hoaxes, witches and wizards, quack scientists, and women-disguised-as-men.
It's amazing how, in many of the cases of family members gone missing only to "reappear" again later, that people who formally knew the person, believed that the imposter was, indeed, their long-lost friend or relative. Stoker describes many instances where people had recorded that So-and-so looked nothing like they used to, but simply attributed it to maturity of the person. They didn't seem to question the possibility of an imposter at all.
Although it was interesting, some of the sections read like disjointed notes... like Stoker didn't bother to edit them or put them into a more chronological order before publishing. His style is also quite scholarly, so this isn't a casual non-fiction read, however it is well-worth the effort.
It may have been difficult for me to understand much of the relationships, mostly royal ones, because I'm not British or French (or European, for that matter) and have never learned or understood the complex hierarchy of royal families. When the same person is Duke of This, King of That, Prince of There, Earl of What--and cyclically referred to by all these names in the section--it gets very confusing for my American mind. This, combined with a lot of name dropping of people who didn't really need to be introduced, muddled my head and regardless of how many times I reread the section, I still couldn't keep some of the narratives straight as to who was who.
I was tempted to give this 2.5 stars because of some of the more difficult to understand passages, but figured 3 was quite fair, especially when taking into account the unique, quirky, secretive nature of the topic.
September 5, 2015
Very interesting, entertaining book about real life imposters of long ago.
This book starts off with Perkin Warbeck, who pretended to be Richard, one of the Plantagenet Princes in the Tower.
The book has many imposters as well as hoaxes. The Cat Hoax was one, and it did not end well.
The last chapter was my favorite. It is devoted to the Bisley Boy. Did Queen Elizabeth die when young in Bisley? Was she replaced by a boy somehow related to her? Did a trusted clergyman really find a girl in a coffin with Tudor finery in Bisley? Why did Queen Elizabeth never marry? This and many questions are discussed.
Interesting and fun read!
This book starts off with Perkin Warbeck, who pretended to be Richard, one of the Plantagenet Princes in the Tower.
The book has many imposters as well as hoaxes. The Cat Hoax was one, and it did not end well.
The last chapter was my favorite. It is devoted to the Bisley Boy. Did Queen Elizabeth die when young in Bisley? Was she replaced by a boy somehow related to her? Did a trusted clergyman really find a girl in a coffin with Tudor finery in Bisley? Why did Queen Elizabeth never marry? This and many questions are discussed.
Interesting and fun read!
July 26, 2018
I enjoyed this one even though some of the names of Dukes, Earls, etc from history were hard to follow for me. For most books, I deduct points for bad editing; however, the typos and formatting problems with this edition are not the fault of the author. Anyone who prepares Kindle versions of classic books should do better jobs than this.
October 22, 2014
I focused all of my attention on the last chapter which depicts the famous imposture in the English history, if it is really true. The Bisley boy became the Queen at last. What an absurd adventure. Do you think she was actually a he?
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews