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Literary forgery (also known as literary mystification, literary fraud or literary hoax) is writing, such as a manuscript or a literary work, which is either deliberately misattributed to a historical or invented author, or is a purported memoir or other presumably writing deceptively presented as true when, in fact, it presents untrue or imaginary information or content. These deceptive practices have a long history and have occurred across various literary traditions, often with significant cultural or financial impacts.
Literary forgeries can take many forms, including works that are falsely claimed to be ancient texts by known authors, fabricated memoirs, or fictional accounts presented as historical records. The reasons for creating literary forgeries can vary, including the pursuit of financial gain, the desire for literary recognition, or the promotion of specific ideological views.
While literary forgeries are often exposed and discredited, they can nevertheless have outsized impacts in shaping cultural and historical narratives.
Literary forgery has a long history. Onomacritus (c. 530 – 480 BCE) is among the most ancient known literary forgers. He created prophecy, which he ascribed to the poet Musaeus.B. Ehrman, Writing in the Name of God--Why the Bible's Authors Are Not Who We Think They Are, HarperOne (2011), pp. 39-40 In the 4th century BCE, Axiopistus created forgeries he attributed to 5th-century BCE writer Epicharmus of Kos.
In the 3rd century CE, a certain Septimius produced what appeared to be a Latin translation of an eyewitness account of the Trojan War by Dictys of Crete. In the letter of dedication, the translator gave additional credence to the document by claiming the Greek original had come to light during Nero's reign when Dictys' tomb was opened by an earthquake and his diary was discovered. Septimius then claimed the original had been handed to the governor of Crete, Rutilius Rufus, who gave the diary to Nero during his tour of Greece in 66-67 CE. According to historian Miriam Griffin, such bogus and romantic claims to antiquity were not uncommon at the time.Nero: The end of a Dynasty, Miram T. Griffin, 1984. Chapter 9.
One of the longest lasting literary forgeries is by Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, a 5th-6th century Syrian mystical writer who claimed to be a disciple of Paul the Apostle. Five hundred years later, Abelard expressed doubts about the authorship, but it was not until after the Renaissance that there was general agreement that the attribution of the work was false. In the intervening 1,000 years, the writings had much theological influence.Sarah Coakley (Editor), Charles M. Stang (Editor), Re-thinking Dionysius the Areopagite, Wiley-Blackwell (2009),
Thomas Chatterton (1752–1770), the English poet and letter writer, began his brilliant medieval forgeries when little more than a child. While they brought him praise and fame after his death, his writing afforded little in the way of financial success and he committed suicide aged 17, penniless, alone and half-starved.
The English Mercurie appeared to be the first English newspaper when it was discovered in 1794. This was, ostensibly, an account of the English battle with the Spanish Armada of 1588, but was, in fact, written in the 18th century by Philip Yorke, 2nd Earl of Hardwicke, as a literary game with his friends. Penny Magazine of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, Volume 9, January 18, 1840, pp. 17-19
Literary forgery was promoted as a creative method by Charles Nodier and, in the 19th century, many writers produced literary forgeries under his influence, notably Prosper Merimee and Pierre Louys.
Ernest Lalor "Ern" Malley was a fictitious poet invented by Australian writers James McAuley and Harold Stewart to lampoon a Modernism art and literary movement centered around a journal called Angry Penguins. The authors created "Malley's" body of work in one day in 1943 and Angry Penguins devoted an issue to the poet. The Ern Malley hoax became the most famous hoax of Australian literary history.
I, Libertine began as a hoax perpetrated by radio host Jean Shepherd in coordination with his listeners, whom he instructed to contact local bookstores to ask for the "raunchy historical romance" by the fictitious author Frederick R. Ewing, said to be "a retired Royal Navy officer resident in Rhodesia and expert in eighteenth-century erotica." The ensuing scandal became so widely known that Ballantine Books commissioned Theodore Sturgeon to make it into a real book, which Ballantine published in 1956.
Newsday reporter Mike McGrady collaborated with other authors to produce a popular novel "so trashy and irredeemable that it could not be defended on any sort of critical grounds." McGrady deemed of its creation, "There will be an unremitting emphasis on sex. Also, true excellence in writing will be quickly blue-penciled into oblivion.” The result was Naked Came the Stranger by “Penelope Ashe." The book was published by Lyle Stuart in 1969. It sold 20,000 copies by the time McGrady revealed the hoax, at which point it quickly sold another 90,000 copies.
Konrad Kujau, an East German forger, created Hitler Diaries. His forgeries, executed from 1981 to 1983, passed initial scrutiny. The magazine Stern purchased them at great expense, but various errors and closer forensic analysis revealed them as fakes. Kujau was subsequently sent to prison for fraud, theft and forgery.
Stewart Home explored the literary hoax as an anarchist art form in the 1980s and 1990s. One of his published fabrications resulted in the arrest of The KLF musician Jimmy Cauty on weapons charges. Home's literary pranks were collected in Confusion Incorporated: A Collection of Lies, Hoaxes & Hidden Truths (Codex, 1999).
Laura Albert wrote novels in the late 1990s and early 2000s under the Persona JT LeRoy. While literary personas are not necessarily hoaxes, LeRoy was promoted as having produced autobiographical fiction as a gay man. Because it was impossible for LeRoy to make public appearances, Albert invented another persona, Emily "Speedie" Frasier, who was supposedly LeRoy's roommate and would appear on his behalf. Albert's real identity was exposed by the magazine New York. Albert signed a contract with the name JT LeRoy with a film company for an adaptation of her novel Sarah. This resulted in a lawsuit that was decided against the author.
Poet Michael Derrick Hudson, having unsuccessfully submitted one of his poems to forty literary journals, placed it in the Fall 2014 issue of Prairie Schooner when he resubmitted it under the name "Yi-Fen Chou." It was subsequently considered for publication in the 2015 edition of the Best American Poetry anthology series edited by author Sherman Alexie. Hudson revealed the use of a pseudonym to Alexie when he learned of the potential inclusion. The incident caused debate concerning whether identity politics were interfering with the discernment of literary quality.
Writer Aaron Barry revealed in July 2025 that he had placed 47 "intentionally bad" poems in various journals under a wide variety of invented personas. The identities included "b.h. fein" (using the pronouns "it's/complicated"), "dirt hogg sauvage respectfully," and "Adele Nwankwo," who described herself as a "Gender fluidity member of the Nigerians diaspora." He told The Free Press, "I was just not in the demographic that would even consider accepting in some cases." He cited the Ern Malley hoax and the Grievance studies affair as inspirations.
Other forms considered literary hoaxes are when an author asserts an identity and history for themselves that is not accurate. Asa Earl Carter wrote under the pseudonym Forrest Carter; Forrest Carter claimed to be a half-Cherokee descendent who grew up in native culture, but the real Asa Earl Carter was a white man from Alabama. Forrest Carter's persona thus possessed a similar false authenticity as a forged work would, in both their memoir and their fiction. Similarly, Nasdijj and Margaret Seltzer also falsely claimed Native American descent to help market their works.William McGowan, Gray Lady Down: What the Decline and Fall of the New York Times Means, pp. 160-161, Encounter books, 2010, Menand, Louis (2018). " Literary Hoaxes and the Ethics of Authorship". The New Yorker. Condé Nast. Danny Santiago claimed to be a young Latino growing up in East Los Angeles, yet the author (whose real name was Daniel Lewis James) was a Midwesterner in his 70s.Folkart, Burt A. "OBITUARIES : Daniel James : Writer Who Masqueraded as a Latino."
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Examples of this may include several works of wisdom literature such as the book of Ecclesiastes and the Song of Solomon in the Hebrew Bible. Both works do not directly name an author, but are written from the perspective of King Solomon, and feature poetry and philosophical thoughts from his perspective that can switch between first and third-person perspectives. The books may not have intended to be taken as actually from the hand of Solomon, but this became tangled, and many later generations did assume they were directly from Solomon's hand. The fact that it is not clear if any deception was involved makes many scholars reluctant to call the work forgeries, however, even those that take the modern scholarly view that they were unlikely to have been written by Solomon due to the work only being quoted by others many centuries after Solomon's death.
For more disputed examples, some New Testament scholars believe that pseudepigrapha in the New Testament epistles can be explained as such transparent fictions. Richard Bauckham, for example, writes that for the Second Epistle of Peter, "Petrine authorship was intended to be an entirely transparent fiction."Jude-2 Peter, Volume 50, Word Biblical Commentary. This view is contested. Bart Ehrman writes that if a religiously prescriptive document was widely known to be not actually from the authority it claimed, it would not be taken seriously. Therefore, the claim of authorship by Peter only makes sense if the intent was indeed to falsely claim the authority of a respected figure in such epistles.
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