Forgeries (derivative objects)

This volume, entitled “Arbres de l’Amérique,” consists of 157 original pencil drawings (exact copies reduced to one third of the originals) of engraving taken from paintings by P.J. Redouté and Pancrace Bessa done for Francois-Andre Michaux’s North American Sylva, Paris, 1817-1819.

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.

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.