Literary forgeries and mystifications--History--19th century

Abstract The Bruce Garland collection of Thomas Wise material comprises approximately 1.6 linear feet of material pertaining to English bibliographer, book collector, and forger Thomas J. Wise (1859-1937). Much of the collection's material was compiled by English bibliographer and book collector John Carter (1905-1975), who co-authored with Graham Pollard (1903-1976) An Enquiry into the Nature of Certain Nineteenth Century Pamphlets (1934), which effectively outed Wise as a...

Abstract

Alexander Howland Smith, also known as "Antique Smith," was a Scottish law clerk known for the literary forgeries he produced circa 1888 to 1892. Many of Smith's dealings involved Edinburgh bookseller, James Stillie, who may have been complicit in passing the forgeries. The collection comprises Smith's sixteen-page forgery of Robert Burns's cantata The Jolly Beggars, along with documentation attempting to verify its authenticity.

Abstract

The Frank W. Tober collection on literary forgery comprises letters, books, pamphlets, journals and journal articles, newspaper clippings, auction and exhibition catalogs, and other ephemera related to literary forgery. While Tober collected specimens of a variety of manuscript and printed forgeries, he was most interested in the literary forgeries of Thomas J. Wise and H. Buxton Forman.