Notable Literary Forgeries in History

Only 18 years of age, William Henry, whose duties as a lawyer’s apprentice allowed him access to numerous legal documents including centuries old ones, brought home a mortgage deed supposedly signed by Shakespeare to his father’s delight. It was copied from a legitimate 1612 mortgage deed attached with a seal torn from another early deed. Samuel even managed to have the deed certified as genuine. Had William Henry been content with this single relic, his father would have gone to the grave a happy man. Yet he continued to produce more spectacular finds including a love letter to Anne Hathaway and a letter to Shakespeare from Elizabeth I. (See a sample forged Shakespeare document here.) His troubles began when he decided to create the entirely new play “Vortigern and Rowena,” a discovery that would overshadow all of his other finds. Richard Brinsley Sheridan, the Irish playwright who bought the rights to stage the play, started to publicly cast doubts regarding its authenticity after reading it, noting its rather simplistic plot compared to other known Shakespearean plays. From then on, all the other Shakespearean papers were called into question as interest in the play heightened.

The devastating blows came in 1796 when Edmond Malone, the foremost Shakespearean scholar of the day, published an exhaustive study of over 400 densely printed pages exposing the forgeries in detail. Furthermore, chaos ensued a few weeks later during the first (and only) performance of the play, partly attributable to the intense forgery debate but mainly due to the quality of the play itself. When critics started accusing Samuel of forgery, his son confessed to the whole thing, straining hard to exculpate his innocent father from having the slightest knowledge of it. However, Samuel did not accept his son’s admission but instead blamed Malone for his misfortunes. Though Samuel fought hard to protect his son, he would die with his reputation irreparably damaged. His son, on the other hand, took odd jobs and published a number of novels and poetry, yet lived a life of penury until his death.

Fabricated Howard Hughes Autobiography

Howard Hughes (Image source)

By 1958, Howard Hughes (1905-1976), an American aviator, engineer, film producer and director, philanthropist and one of the world’s richest men, had become a recluse, who despised any form of public scrutiny. So the announcement in 1971 that McGraw-Hill and Life Magazine were going to publish an autobiography of the billionaire loner naturally generated quite a media sensation. The autobiography was to be written with the assistance of writer Cifford Irving, who managed to convince the staff of McGraw-Hill and Life Magazine that he was able to obtain the paranoid Hughes’ permission and trust by recounting numerous supposed meetings with Hughes in detail and introducing anecdotes he had gained during his extensive research. And to further strengthen his claim, he produced a letter purportedly written by Hughes to his publisher notifying him of the agreement.

Theatrical poster of the 2006 movie “The Hoax” (Image source)

Whenever Hughes found out that someone was writing an unauthorized biography of him, he would buy the writer off. But in this particular case, he did not immediately refute Irving’s statement publicly, leading many to believe the autobiography to be true. It was not until its imminent publication that Hughes contacted the outside world to denounce Irving through a teleconference, saying he never met him and thereby, exposing the entire project as one big hoax. Irving was eventually convicted of fraud and served 17 months in prison. Following his release, he wrote several books including “The Hoax” (1977), which described all the events in detail, and which was ultimately used as basis for the screenplay of the 2006 eponymous movie directed by Lasse Hallström and starring Richard Gere as Irving. (A few chapters of the Howard Hughes autobiography can be downloaded here for free.)