Exhibit forges ahead on historical fakes

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By Allison Alvey

Readers often take for granted the validity of historical documents, but a new exhibit at the M.I. King Library is proving that it is not wise to automatically trust everything.
The “Fakes, Forgeries, and Piracies” exhibit, which is being held in the King Library through mid-November, allows UK students to observe a fake page from the Gutenberg Bible, James Macpherson’s made-up translation of the poems of Ossian, a piracy of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s original 1847 edition of “Sonnets from the Portuguese” and many more famous forged documents.
“It’s a good object lesson about how well these were done and how people wanted to believe there was such a poet as Ossian,” said Gordon Hogg, director of the King Library. “People stake their academic credentials in studying these famous poets.”

Macpherson claimed to have found and translated the poet Ossian’s ancient manuscripts, but his works were discovered as a fabrication in 1805. Macpherson had actually written all of the poems in the book that were supposedly by Ossian. However, he was still widely admired by the public for being the creator of the fake poems.
Thomas J. Wise was a British bibliographer who collected books. He privately printed nearly 300 works of English authors, many of which were found out to be piracies. He was caught forging the works because he printed the fakes on a type of paper that was not yet available and used a typeface that had not been invented at the time the original manuscripts were printed.
Many of these people created forgeries for fame or money, but others had deeper motives in creating fake documents, said Jim Birchfield, the curator of rare books at the King Library.
“It’s almost an aspect of psychological control,” Birchfield said. “There’s a sense of power in making people believe something that isn’t correct.”
Forgeries are not just a thing of the past, Birchfield said. A few years ago, he said someone claimed to have discovered the diaries of Adolf Hitler, but they were later disproved.
Bill Marshall, the curator of manuscripts at the King Library, said forgery or piracy in literature can be compared to the contemporary act of stealing music.
“It’s like pirating music, but they used to pirate literature instead,” he said. “It’s an exciting exhibit because it’s a mystery that has unraveled. It has many different things in it that people haven’t seen before.”