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A Neglected Anniversary
Type: Journalistic Hoax. Summary: Text of an article detailing a false history of the bathtub. What follows is the complete text of Henry L. Mencken’s article “A Neglected Anniversary,” published in the New York Evening Mail on December 28, 1917. The article presents a false history of the bathtub. Details…
Blue Laws of Connecticut
Type: Fake History. Summary: An eighteenth-Century historian wrote about repressive “blue laws” supposedly once practiced in Connecticut. The term ‘Blue Laws’ describes harsh, puritanical laws that regulate public morality. Such laws supposedly existed in colonial America, making it illegal to do such things as kiss a child or shave on…
Casablanca Rejected
Type: Literary Hoax. Summary: The script of Casablanca was sent to over 200 movie agents. A large number of them rejected it, many with disparaging remarks about its quality. Too much dialogue, not enough exposition, weak story line Casablanca is arguably the most famous movie in the history of film.…
Claire Chazal Experiment
Type: Literary Hoax. Summary: A French magazine mocked a celebrity author by submitting a disguised copy of her novel to her own publisher, which rejected it. Claire Chazal Claire Chazal was a well-known newswoman who presented the evening news on France’s TF1 network. Like many French celebrities, she had decided…
Doris Lessing as Jane Somers
Type: Literary hoax (of the spurious submission type) Summary: Doris Lessing used a pseudonym to submit copies of a new work by herself to the publishers of her previous works. In 1983 the novel The Diary of a Good Neighbor was published in Great Britain and United States. It told…
Eighteenth-Century Literary Hoaxes
Type: Literary Hoaxes. Summary: The eighteenth century is regarded as the great age of literary forgery. During the eighteenth century literary fakes poured forth from the pens of writers. A number of factors contributed to this. First, this was the period during which print culture became ascendant over oral culture.…
Ern Malley
Type: Literary hoax. Summary: Two Australian poets deliberately wrote nonsense verse, and fooled an editor into believing it was the work of a brilliant young writer. Max Harris was a glamorous young Australian poet who was making a reputation for himself as something of a rebel as editor of Angry…
Fortsas Bibliohoax
Cover of the Fortsas CatalogJean Nepomucene Auguste Pichauld, Comte de Fortsas, was a man with a singular passion. He collected books of which only one copy was known to exist. If he ever discovered that one of the volumes in his library had a duplicate anywhere in the world, he…
Hitler Diaries
Type: Forgery. Summary: A fake set of diaries, supposedly written by Adolf Hitler, became one of the most costly forgeries in history. Gerd Heidemann (right) and Wolf Hess (left), son of Nazi leader Rudolf Hess, pose with a volume of the Hitler diaries. April, 1983. Table of Contents The Beginning:…
James Macpherson and the Ossianic Controversy
Type: Literary hoax. Summary: An eighteenth-century schoolmaster claimed to have found poems written by a third-century Scottish bard. The poems were actually written by the schoolmaster himself. James MacphersonIn 1760 a young Edinburgh schoolmaster named James Macpherson (1736-1796) published a translation of ancient Scottish verse titled Fragments of Ancient Poetry,…
Madagascar or Robert Drurys Journal
Type: Undetermined. Probably not a hoax. Summary: There has been continuing debate about whether a popular tale describing survival in eighteenth-century Madagascar was truth or fiction. Ask your average eighteenth-century Englishman about the faraway land of Madagascar, and all you’d get was a blank stare. For the English, Madagascar was…
Melancholy Reflections
Type: Exposé of a journalistic hoax. Summary: Text of an article in which H.L. Mencken admitted inventing a false history of the bathtub. What follows is the complete text of Henry L. Mencken’s article “Melancholy Reflections,” published in the Chicago Tribune on May 23, 1926. In the article, Mencken admits…
Milton Rejected
Type: Literary Hoax Summary: During the late nineteenth-century a hoaxer sent disguised copies of a work by John Milton to publishers, most of whom rejected it. Text from: Walsh, William. (1893). Handy-Book of Literary Curiosities. J.B. Lippincott Company. Philadelphia. 1893: 469-470. A very different sort of hoax was recently practised…
Modest Proposals
Type: Genre of satirical hoax. Summary: A form of satire that makes its point by shocking people with a socially taboo proposal. In 1729 Jonathan Swift published a short work titled A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People in Ireland From Being a Burden to their Parents…
Naked Came The Stranger
Newsday columnist Mike McGrady was convinced that standards of literary and artistic taste were plummeting rapidly in the United States, driven down by a relentless flood of media sensationalism that catered to the lowest common denominator. So he decided to design an experiment to test the depths of the American…
Report From Iron Mountain
Type: Conspiracy hoax. Summary: A book alleged to provide evidence of the American government’s plan to maintain a perpetual state of war. Front cover of Report From Iron Mountain. In 1967 the war in Vietnam was escalating and race riots were breaking out in many major U.S. cities. Popular distrust…
Rudolph Fentz
The widely circulated story of Rudolph Fentz is told as follows: In June 1950 a man suddenly appeared in the center of New York City’s Times Square, as if from out of the blue. He was wearing old-fashioned clothes and sported the kind of mutton-chop sideburns that had gone out…
Spurious Submission Hoaxes
Type: Literary Hoax. Summary: A hoaxer takes a well-regarded work and alters a few key details, such as the title and name of the author. He then submits the manuscript to a publisher. Usually the publisher fails to recognize the work and rejects it. Every year publishers receive thousands of…
The Steps Experiment
Type: Literary Hoax (an example of a spurious submission hoax). Summary: The script of Jerzy Kosinski’s award-winning novel Steps was submitted under a false name to fourteen different publishers, all of whom rejected it. Artwork accompanying Ross’s 1979 article describing the Steps Experiment. In 1975 Chuck Ross was selling cable…
The Third Eye
Type: Phony Tibetan monk. Summary: The son of a British plumber claimed to be a lama from a wealthy Tibetan family. Tuesday Lobsang Rampa The Third Eye, published in 1956 and authored by Tuesday Lobsang Rampa, purported to be Rampa’s autobiographical tale of his study and mastery of Tibetan Buddhism.…
Thomas Chatterton
Type: Literary forgery. Summary: A young man in eighteenth-century England claimed to have found poetry by a fifteenth-century priest. The Death of Chatterton, Oil Painting by Henry Wallis, 1856As a young boy growing up in Bristol, Thomas Chatterton (1752-1770) spent a great deal of time with his uncle, the sexton…
Travels of Marco Polo
Did Marco Polo Go To China by Frances Wood, head of the Chinese Department at the British Library Marco Polo’s famous Description of the World was written around 1298. It was Polo’s account of the many years he had spent in China. According to the book’s prologue, Marco Polo first…
Travels of Sir John Mandeville
Illustration from the earliest printed edition of Mandeville’s Travels showing some of the various races and species that Mandeville claimed to have encountered, including (clockwise from top left): the wild men with horns and hoofs; the people with eyes in their shoulders; the folk that have but one foot; and…
Trial of Polly Baker
Type: Literary Hoax. Summary: The story of a woman tried for giving birth to five children out of wedlock provoked widespread popular outrage during the eighteenth century. In 1747 the text of a speech delivered by a woman, Polly Baker, accused by British magistrates in a court in Colonial America…
Voynich Manuscript
A sample of untranslatable text from the Voynich manuscript The Voynich manuscript dates back at least to the seventeenth century, though it is possibly much older. It is approximately 240 pages long, and its pages are filled with hand-written text and crudely drawn illustrations. The illustrations depict plants, astrological diagrams,…
William Henry Ireland - Shakespeare Forgeries
Type: Literary Forgery. Summary: During the 1790s, a young man claimed to have found a new play written by Shakespeare. A letter supposedly written by Shakespeare (forged by Ireland) expressing gratitude towards the Earl of Southampton. (click for larger version)As literacy rates rose during the eighteenth century, a kind of…
Witch Trial at Mount Holly
Type: Media Hoax. Summary: In 1730 an American newspaper printed a detailed account of a fictitious witch trial. On October 22, 1730 an article appeared in the Pennsylvania Gazette describing a witch trial that had recently been held in Mount Holly near Burlington, New Jersey. (To read the full text…
Witch Trial at Mount Holly - Text
Type: Media Hoax. Summary: The complete text of a 1730 newspaper article describing a witch trial that supposedly occurred in New Jersey. What follows is the complete text of the “Witch Trial at Mount Holly” hoax, believed to have been written by Benjamin Franklin. It was published in the Pennsylvania…
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Articles in category "Arts -> Literature":
There are 28 articles for this category
A Neglected Anniversary
Type: Journalistic Hoax. Summary: Text of an article detailing a false history of the bathtub. What follows is the complete text of Henry L. Mencken’s article “A Neglected Anniversary,” published in the New York Evening Mail on December 28, 1917. The article presents a false history of the bathtub. Details…
Blue Laws of Connecticut
Type: Fake History. Summary: An eighteenth-Century historian wrote about repressive “blue laws” supposedly once practiced in Connecticut. The term ‘Blue Laws’ describes harsh, puritanical laws that regulate public morality. Such laws supposedly existed in colonial America, making it illegal to do such things as kiss a child or shave on…
Casablanca Rejected
Type: Literary Hoax. Summary: The script of Casablanca was sent to over 200 movie agents. A large number of them rejected it, many with disparaging remarks about its quality. Too much dialogue, not enough exposition, weak story line Casablanca is arguably the most famous movie in the history of film.…
Claire Chazal Experiment
Type: Literary Hoax. Summary: A French magazine mocked a celebrity author by submitting a disguised copy of her novel to her own publisher, which rejected it. Claire Chazal Claire Chazal was a well-known newswoman who presented the evening news on France’s TF1 network. Like many French celebrities, she had decided…
Doris Lessing as Jane Somers
Type: Literary hoax (of the spurious submission type) Summary: Doris Lessing used a pseudonym to submit copies of a new work by herself to the publishers of her previous works. In 1983 the novel The Diary of a Good Neighbor was published in Great Britain and United States. It told…
Eighteenth-Century Literary Hoaxes
Type: Literary Hoaxes. Summary: The eighteenth century is regarded as the great age of literary forgery. During the eighteenth century literary fakes poured forth from the pens of writers. A number of factors contributed to this. First, this was the period during which print culture became ascendant over oral culture.…
Ern Malley
Type: Literary hoax. Summary: Two Australian poets deliberately wrote nonsense verse, and fooled an editor into believing it was the work of a brilliant young writer. Max Harris was a glamorous young Australian poet who was making a reputation for himself as something of a rebel as editor of Angry…
Fortsas Bibliohoax
Cover of the Fortsas CatalogJean Nepomucene Auguste Pichauld, Comte de Fortsas, was a man with a singular passion. He collected books of which only one copy was known to exist. If he ever discovered that one of the volumes in his library had a duplicate anywhere in the world, he…
Hitler Diaries
Type: Forgery. Summary: A fake set of diaries, supposedly written by Adolf Hitler, became one of the most costly forgeries in history. Gerd Heidemann (right) and Wolf Hess (left), son of Nazi leader Rudolf Hess, pose with a volume of the Hitler diaries. April, 1983. Table of Contents The Beginning:…
James Macpherson and the Ossianic Controversy
Type: Literary hoax. Summary: An eighteenth-century schoolmaster claimed to have found poems written by a third-century Scottish bard. The poems were actually written by the schoolmaster himself. James MacphersonIn 1760 a young Edinburgh schoolmaster named James Macpherson (1736-1796) published a translation of ancient Scottish verse titled Fragments of Ancient Poetry,…
Madagascar or Robert Drurys Journal
Type: Undetermined. Probably not a hoax. Summary: There has been continuing debate about whether a popular tale describing survival in eighteenth-century Madagascar was truth or fiction. Ask your average eighteenth-century Englishman about the faraway land of Madagascar, and all you’d get was a blank stare. For the English, Madagascar was…
Melancholy Reflections
Type: Exposé of a journalistic hoax. Summary: Text of an article in which H.L. Mencken admitted inventing a false history of the bathtub. What follows is the complete text of Henry L. Mencken’s article “Melancholy Reflections,” published in the Chicago Tribune on May 23, 1926. In the article, Mencken admits…
Milton Rejected
Type: Literary Hoax Summary: During the late nineteenth-century a hoaxer sent disguised copies of a work by John Milton to publishers, most of whom rejected it. Text from: Walsh, William. (1893). Handy-Book of Literary Curiosities. J.B. Lippincott Company. Philadelphia. 1893: 469-470. A very different sort of hoax was recently practised…
Modest Proposals
Type: Genre of satirical hoax. Summary: A form of satire that makes its point by shocking people with a socially taboo proposal. In 1729 Jonathan Swift published a short work titled A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People in Ireland From Being a Burden to their Parents…
Naked Came The Stranger
Newsday columnist Mike McGrady was convinced that standards of literary and artistic taste were plummeting rapidly in the United States, driven down by a relentless flood of media sensationalism that catered to the lowest common denominator. So he decided to design an experiment to test the depths of the American…
Report From Iron Mountain
Type: Conspiracy hoax. Summary: A book alleged to provide evidence of the American government’s plan to maintain a perpetual state of war. Front cover of Report From Iron Mountain. In 1967 the war in Vietnam was escalating and race riots were breaking out in many major U.S. cities. Popular distrust…
Rudolph Fentz
The widely circulated story of Rudolph Fentz is told as follows: In June 1950 a man suddenly appeared in the center of New York City’s Times Square, as if from out of the blue. He was wearing old-fashioned clothes and sported the kind of mutton-chop sideburns that had gone out…
Spurious Submission Hoaxes
Type: Literary Hoax. Summary: A hoaxer takes a well-regarded work and alters a few key details, such as the title and name of the author. He then submits the manuscript to a publisher. Usually the publisher fails to recognize the work and rejects it. Every year publishers receive thousands of…
The Steps Experiment
Type: Literary Hoax (an example of a spurious submission hoax). Summary: The script of Jerzy Kosinski’s award-winning novel Steps was submitted under a false name to fourteen different publishers, all of whom rejected it. Artwork accompanying Ross’s 1979 article describing the Steps Experiment. In 1975 Chuck Ross was selling cable…
The Third Eye
Type: Phony Tibetan monk. Summary: The son of a British plumber claimed to be a lama from a wealthy Tibetan family. Tuesday Lobsang Rampa The Third Eye, published in 1956 and authored by Tuesday Lobsang Rampa, purported to be Rampa’s autobiographical tale of his study and mastery of Tibetan Buddhism.…
Thomas Chatterton
Type: Literary forgery. Summary: A young man in eighteenth-century England claimed to have found poetry by a fifteenth-century priest. The Death of Chatterton, Oil Painting by Henry Wallis, 1856As a young boy growing up in Bristol, Thomas Chatterton (1752-1770) spent a great deal of time with his uncle, the sexton…
Travels of Marco Polo
Did Marco Polo Go To China by Frances Wood, head of the Chinese Department at the British Library Marco Polo’s famous Description of the World was written around 1298. It was Polo’s account of the many years he had spent in China. According to the book’s prologue, Marco Polo first…
Travels of Sir John Mandeville
Illustration from the earliest printed edition of Mandeville’s Travels showing some of the various races and species that Mandeville claimed to have encountered, including (clockwise from top left): the wild men with horns and hoofs; the people with eyes in their shoulders; the folk that have but one foot; and…
Trial of Polly Baker
Type: Literary Hoax. Summary: The story of a woman tried for giving birth to five children out of wedlock provoked widespread popular outrage during the eighteenth century. In 1747 the text of a speech delivered by a woman, Polly Baker, accused by British magistrates in a court in Colonial America…
Voynich Manuscript
A sample of untranslatable text from the Voynich manuscript The Voynich manuscript dates back at least to the seventeenth century, though it is possibly much older. It is approximately 240 pages long, and its pages are filled with hand-written text and crudely drawn illustrations. The illustrations depict plants, astrological diagrams,…
William Henry Ireland - Shakespeare Forgeries
Type: Literary Forgery. Summary: During the 1790s, a young man claimed to have found a new play written by Shakespeare. A letter supposedly written by Shakespeare (forged by Ireland) expressing gratitude towards the Earl of Southampton. (click for larger version)As literacy rates rose during the eighteenth century, a kind of…
Witch Trial at Mount Holly
Type: Media Hoax. Summary: In 1730 an American newspaper printed a detailed account of a fictitious witch trial. On October 22, 1730 an article appeared in the Pennsylvania Gazette describing a witch trial that had recently been held in Mount Holly near Burlington, New Jersey. (To read the full text…
Witch Trial at Mount Holly - Text
Type: Media Hoax. Summary: The complete text of a 1730 newspaper article describing a witch trial that supposedly occurred in New Jersey. What follows is the complete text of the “Witch Trial at Mount Holly” hoax, believed to have been written by Benjamin Franklin. It was published in the Pennsylvania…