Literary Hoaxes

The other day, in a conversation with a friend, I told the story of a student who had delivered an oral book report on an H. G. Wells novel; I believe it was on The Island of Dr. Moreau.  Part way through his plot summary the student mentioned someone using a computer, and that was the final clue that confirmed my suspicion that this student had not read the book but had watched the film version.  When confronted, the student admitted that I was right but wondered how I knew.  I had to tell him that the author was born in 1866 and died in 1946 and that the novel was written towards the end of the 19^th century when computers of the type he had described in his report had not been invented. 

My friend called this a book report hoax and that got me thinking about literary hoaxes in general.  The one I remember is that of the Hitler diaries in the early 1980s.  An East German forger faked the diaries and sold them to Stern magazine for about $6.8 million CAD.  Eventually the diaries were acquired by The Sunday Times in Britain and Newsweek in the United States.

By chance, I came across an article about other literary hoaxes:  “11 Legendary Literary Hoaxes:  From Fake Irish Poets to the Genius of J. T. Leroy.”  It makes for interesting reading:  http://lithub.com/11-legendary-literary-hoaxes/.