FORGER

Tennyson forgery: manuscript document presenting itself as a letter from Alfred Lord Tennyson to the wife of William Ewart Gladstone, agreeing to a visit as long as he can smoke his pipe.

Author: 
Tennyson forgery: Alfred Lord Tennyson, one of the greatest of English poets, Poet Laureate to Queen Victoria
Tennyson forgery
Publication details: 
Stated to have been sent from 'Aldworth / Oct 25 - 76'. [25 October 1876]
£180.00
Tennyson forgery

An apparent forgery of a letter the text of which is quoted in Hallam Tennyson’s 1897 memoir of his father. 1p, 12mo. On discoloured wove paper. Aged, and with repair with archival tape at extremities on reverse. Folded twice for postage. Reads: ‘Aldworth / Oct 25 - 76 / My dear Mrs Gladstone / On Monday then - if all be well. As you are good enough to say that you will manage everything rather than lose my visit - you must manage that I may have my pipe in my own room whenever I like? / Yours ever / A Tennyson/’.

[Charlotte Bronte ‘did not always tell the truth’ and guilty of ‘deceit’.] Copy of Typed Letter to E. F. Benson [from her editor John Alexander Symington], criticising her, with reference to C. W. Hatfield and T. J. Wise.

Author: 
[Charlotte Bronte; John Alexander Symington (1887-1961), literary editor; E. F. Benson [Edward Frederic Benson] (1867-1940); Thomas James Wise (1859-1837), book collector and forger; C. W. Hatfield]
Publication details: 
25 April 1932.
£450.00

See the various entries in the Oxford DNB. Typed carbon copy. 1p, foolscap 8vo. Text complete, on aged piece of carbon paper, worn and chipped at edges. No signature. Addressed at foot to ‘E. F. Benson Esq.’ Thirty-one lines of text. He begins by stating that Benson, in his ‘work on Charlotte Brontë’, has ‘made a very correct study of her’. After discussing a point about Branwell Bronte, he states: ‘We cannot rely on Charlotte’s assertion that he knew nothing whatever of their ventures in publishing.

[C. M. Ingleby, Shakespeare scholar who unmasked John Payne Collier.] Autograph Letter Signed, ordering a work he doesn’t ‘actually want’ from a bookseller’s catalogue.

Author: 
C. M. Ingleby [Clement Mansfield Ingleby (1823-1886), Shakespeare scholar who unmasked John Payne Collier as a forger
Publication details: 
‘Valentines / Ilford. / Novr. 19. ’73 [1873] Essex’.
£45.00

See his entry, and that of Collier, in the Oxford DNB. 1p, 12mo. In fair condition, on worn and spotted paper. Folded twice for postage. The recipient is not named. Addressed to ‘Dear Sir’ and signed ‘C. M. Ingleby’. He offers ten pounds for ‘yr. copy of the Encycl: Metropolitana’, and will pay the carriage if he sends it. ‘I don’t actually want it: but its a good book, & I’ll give that as an investment.’ He will send a cheque, once he receives ‘a Post Card: with “yes” on it’. Ends: ‘Other matters in yr. excellent Catalogue I postpone.’

[Philar?te Euphemon Chasles, French critic.] Autograph Letter Signed, in French, [to Charles Wentworth Dilke, editor of the Athenaeum,] criticising John Payne Collier?s scholarship.

Author: 
Philar?te Euphemon Chasles (1798-1873), French man of letters [John Payne Collier (1789-1883), Shakespearean critic and forger; Charles Wentworth Dilke (1789-1864), editor of the Athenaeum]
Publication details: 
No date or place. [Circa 1842.]
£100.00

See the entries on Collier and Dilke in the Oxford DNB. The eight volumes of Collier?s edition of Shakespeare?s works were first published between 1842 and 1844, with the sonnets and other poems in the last volume. The Athenaeum carried a long review of vols.2 and 3 of Collier?s edition on 9 July 1842, and another dealing with the biographical element of the entire work on 2 March 1844. From this letter it is clear that Chasles intended to review the eighth and last volume containing the sonnets (and may well have done so). The present item is 3pp, 12mo. On bifolium.

[Henry Fauntleroy, banker and forger.] Autograph Letter Signed ('H Fauntleroy') to Sir Cuthbert Sharp, written from Cold Bath Fields Prison a few weeks before his hanging at Newgate in front of a crowd of 100,000.

Author: 
Henry Fauntleroy (1784-1824), banker and forger, hanged before Newgate after a trial at the Old Bailey [Sir Cuthbert Sharp (1781-1849), soldier and antiquary]
Publication details: 
'C. B. Fields [i.e. Cold Bath Fields Prison, London] October 14th 1824'.
£500.00

See Fauntleroy's entry in the Oxford DNB. Although accounts of his depravity are exaggerated, Fauntleroy led a dissolute life, and appropriated securities worth around £360,000. During his trial at the Old Bailey he called seventeen merchants and bankers to testify to his integrity, but his defence was unsuccessful, and he was hanged outside Newgate, before a crowd of 100,000. The present item is 1p, 4to. Bifolium, addressed on reverse of second leaf to 'Sir Cuthbert Sharp | &c &c', with endorsement.

[ William Roupell, forger and fraudster. ] Two Autograph Signed documents, the first a draft [ for his election agent ] of a circular to electors on his standing as Member of Parliament for Lambeth; the second another election letter (draft?)

Author: 
William Roupell (1831-1909), forger and fraudster, Member of Parliament for Lambeth, 1857-1862, ruined in the Roupell Case
Publication details: 
Both from Roupell Park, Brixton. March 1857 and 25 April 1859.
£80.00

The first letter has the damaged signature 'William: Roupe', the second is signed 'W: Roupell'. ONE (March 1857): 1p., 8vo. Signed autograph draft of a circular Roupell made for his election agent at the time of his first parliamentary contest. On the reverse of a letterhead of 4 Wolsingham Place, Lambeth, which was the office of solicitor R. C. Barton, who was Roupell's election agent (see George Hill, 'Electoral History of the Borough of Lambeth', 1879). In poor condition, heavily worn, with loss to the outer edges and text, including the end of Roupell's signature.

[ T. J. Wise: Proof of what would be the first volume of his Tennyson bibliography, with Signed Autograph Inscription to W. M. Rossetti. ] A Bibliography of the Writings of Alfred, Lord Tennyson.

Author: 
'T. J. W.' [ Thomas James Wise; T. J. Wise ] (1859-1937), book collector, forger and thief [ William Michael Rossetti (1829-1919); Rose Esther Dorothea Sketchley (1875-1949) ]
Publication details: 
'Of this Book One Hundred Copies Only have been Printed.' London: Printed for Private Circulation. 1907. [ Printer not named, but with date stamp of Richard Clay and Sons, Bread Street Hill, E.C. [ London ], and Bungay, Suffollk, 1 November 1907. ]
£950.00

Alan Bell, in his entry on Wise in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, characterizes him as 'both a careless and a dishonest bibliographer' (see also Simon Nowell-Smith, 'T. J. Wise as Bibliographer' in the Library, 1969). One of Wise's aims was clearly to legitimize his forgeries, and as John Collins states in 'The Two Forgers' (1992), his bibliographies are all 'more or less tarred with Wise's own publications'.

[William Angus Knight, Professor of Moral Philosophy, University of St Andrews.] Autograph Letter Signed ('W. Knight.') to James Dykes Campbell, expressing regret at revealing the existence of Wordsworth's 'Axiologus' sonnet, and attacking T. J. Wise

Author: 
William Angus Knight (1836-1916), Professor of Moral Philosophy in the University of St Andrews, 1876-1902 [James Dykes Campbell (1838-1895), Coleridge biographer; Thomas James Wise. forger]
Publication details: 
On letterhead of the 'University of St Andrew. N.B. [Scotland]'. 2 January 1892.
£120.00

2pp., 12mo. In fair condition, on aged and lightly-worn paper. Written in a difficult hand. The letter begins: 'My dear Campbell. | You will find all I know about Axiologus, and Miss Maria Williams, in a prefatory note Vol I of my Edition of W[illiam]. W[ordsworth].s Poems (not Life).' He confirms that the poem is by Wordsworth, and expresses regret at 'letting it be known: for it led Tutin [John Ramsden Tutin (1855-1913)] of Hull to go & print the sonnet for private circulation some years ago.

[Catalogue by Messrs. Birrell & Garnett, Ltd. (J. E. Norton, Graham Pollard).] Early Newspapers.

Author: 
Messrs. Birrell & Garnett, Ltd. (J. E. Norton, Graham Pollard)
Publication details: 
Catalogue 31. 1931. Offered for Sale by Messrs. Birell & Garnett, Ltd. (J. E. Norton, Graham Pollard). No. 30 Gerrard Street London W.1.
£80.00

24pp., 8vo. Stapled and unbound. On aged and worn paper, with rusting staples. Two indexes in small print on title-page: 'Titles' and 'Places of printing other than London'. 101 items, ranging from the 1645 Mercurius Academicus to the Fleuron, 1923-1930, the last entry ending 'We take this opportunity of expressing our appreciation of the generous review of our TYPE SPECIMEN CATALOGUE [copies of which are still available at 3/6] which occurs on pp. 211-2 of vol. VII.' Those interested in the forger Thomas J.

[Printed] Galleys of additional titles intended for T. J. Wise’s A Shelley Library

Author: 
Thomas J. Wise, forger
Publication details: 
[1924]
£280.00

Galley Proofs of additional Shelleyana intended for and included in A Shelley Library (1924), 9pp., 51 x 21cm, good condition. It was published in the same year as Ashley Library, vol.5. Collins, Two Forgers, p.225, states that A Shelley Library and 1925’s A Swinburne Library ‘were simply reprinted sections from Ashley, pasted up in a different form with a few corrections’, which appears, in the light of these proofs and galleys to be understatement. The present galleys consist of entries for items present in other volumes of the Ashley Library, not vol.

[Two printed works bound together.] Hamilton's 'An Inquiry into the Genuineness of the Manuscript Corrections in Mr. J. Payne Collier's Annotated Shakspere' and 'Mr. J. Payne Collier's reply to Mr. N. E. S. Hamilton's "Inquiry"'.

Author: 
N. E. S. A. Hamilton [Nicholas Esterhazy Stephen Armytage Hamilton (d.1915)] of the Manuscript Department of the British Museum; John Payne Collier (1789-1883), Shakespearian critic and forger
Publication details: 
Hamilton: London: Richard Bentley, New Burlington Street, Publisher in Ordinary to Her Majesty. 1860. Payne Collier: London: Bell and Daldy, 186 Fleet Street. 1860.
£200.00

Both works first editions, and both in good condition, on aged paper. Bound together in late nineteenth-century red cloth half-binding, with marbled boards. Title on spine: 'COLLIER CONTROVERSY | H.R.H. | 1919'. Hamilton title in full: 'An Inquiry into the Genuineness of the Manuscript Corrections in Mr. J. Payne Collier's Annotated Shakspere, Folio, 1632; and of certain Shaksperian Documents likewise published by Mr. Collier'. [4] + 155pp., 4to. With frontispiece and two plates, one of them double-page. Collier title in full: 'Mr. J. Payne Collier's reply to Mr. N. E. S.

Autograph Letter Signed ('MM.') from Maton Marble, editor of New York World, to 'My dear Jack', also 'J R H'. With newspaper cutting comparing Marble's handwriting with that of a cipher dispatch by 'Moses', in article on vote-rigging and forgery.

Author: 
Manton Marble (1834-1917), American journalist, editor of the New York World
Publication details: 
Letter: on letterhead of 'The World' Office, 35 Park Row, New York. 'Saturday AM' [no date]. Newspaper cutting, without date or place.
£56.00

Both items good, on aged paper. Letter: 1p., 12mo. He has 'spoken to three or four of the members' on his behalf, 'most gladly - and have written to Secretary MacDonough to vouch himself & present my voucher to the Com. on Admissions.' Newspaper cutting: Titled 'The Effort to buy a vote in Florida. | Tell-tale fac-similes of dispatches, cipher and plain. | A comparison between a significant telegram of Moses and one signed by Moses Manton.' Giving facsimiles of the two documents, with explanation: 'We present herewith a facsimile of the cipher dispatch in which Moses informs Mr.

Letter Signed "Sidmouth" to an unnamed correspondent.

Author: 
Viscount Sidmouth, statesman (DNB), here "Home Secretary".
Publication details: 
Whitehall, 8 Dec. 1817.
£120.00

Two pages, 4to, copperplate text by secretary, fold marks, marks of sellotape (half inch square at most) at edge, small chip bottom corner,m text cleqar and complete. Sidmouth, who has received a letter in favour of the condemned John Vartie, forger, informs his correspondent that "the Case of this unfortunate Person had the most full and deliberate consideration, at the time when the Report was made to the Prince Regent in Council.

A collection of twenty cuttings from American newspapers mostly relating to autograph collecting.

Author: 
American Autograph Collecting [New York; the Declaration of Independence]
Publication details: 
[Boston, New York and other places]; 1867-1893.
£150.00

Varying in size from a few lines to a column nineteen inches in length, and on aged high-acidity paper. In good condition, though frail, and with a few closed tears. Texts clear and complete. In the remains of a stamped envelope (postmarked Philadelphia, 21 February 1912), addressed to E. H. Lauer of the Cadmus Book Company. Fewer than half the items are dated. The dated items include a long and interesting article on a forgotten English-born Philadelphian forger, headed 'A FORGER OF AUTOGRAPHS. | ROBERT SPRING'S SUCCESS IN BOLD LITERARY FRAUDS.

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