Book Description
Charles Hamilton recognizes a faked signature and believes it to be easily identified, and so will the reader of this book-once he knows what to look for. This is information of immense value to the collector and historian. Well-executed forgeries and fakes have fooled dealers and collectors for more than a century. This thoroughly documented book, containing hundreds of examples that show how to identify the best that the most skillful forgers have produced, will provide the expert and the amateur with tools for self-protection. Great Forgers and Famous Fakes is also a chronicle of the careers of America's most adroit and colorful manuscript forgers, telling who they were and how they swindled their victims. The fascinating stories of forgers and their works include: -the poet who forged hundreds of Robert Frost manuscripts -the multimillionaire industrialist and founder of RCA who got his start as a forger-and years later got fooled by his own fake -the A! merican Nazi who forged John Howard Payne's "Home, Sweet Home" -a round-dozen forgers of Abe Lincoln's handwriting
From the Author
There is a darkling romance in the crime of literary or historical forgery. To fabricate the handwriting and thoughts of another person requires much more than adroit penmanship.
No European forgers ever put quill to foolscap who could equal the ingenious fabricators of America.
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