Joseph Hone's The Book Forger tells the fascinating story about the unmasking of literary conman

How a book forger fooled the literary world until his audacious ruse was rumbled

History

Author Joseph Hone brings us a marvellous literary detective story

Controversy in the book world, like the debate around the veracity of The Salt Path, is nothing new. Excerpts from Konrad Kujau’s faked Hitler Diaries were published through various outlets in the 1980s before their provenance was debunked.

Earlier attempts at bamboozlement by bibliopegists, as mentioned by Joseph Hone, include ‘Major Byron’ claiming to be the poet’s son in order to hawk bogus letters and William Henry Ireland’s attempts at passing off his own substandard scribbling as undiscovered Shakespeare.