books, bibliographies, and forgeries: a review essay

Books, Bibliographies, and Forgeries: A Review EssayThe Two Forgers: A Biography of Harry Buxton Forman &Thomas James Wise by JohnCollinsReview by: Sidney E. BergerLibraries & Culture, Vol. 28, No. 2 (Spring, 1993), pp. 210-214Published by: University of Texas PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25542536 .

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BOOKS, BIBLIOGRAPHIES, AND FORGERIES: A REVIEW ESSAY

Sidney E. Berger

The Two Forgers: A Biography of Harry Buxton Forman & Thomas James Wise. By

John Collins. New Castle, Del.: Oak Knoll Books, 1992. xiii, 317 pp. 67

illustrations. $55.00. ISBN 0-938768-29-8.

The vast dimensions of the extensive damage done to the world of bib

liography by Thomas J. Wise and Harry Buxton Forman have been hith

erto imperfectly realized and understood; this is because the whole story about these two scoundrels has yet to be ferreted out. It seems that every

year or so more is published about their forgeries: on their methods, on

new suspect imprints, or on new ways their forgeries have affected schol

arship.

The present volume goes a long way in realizing and understanding the

problems and clarifying the position the two men had in the proceedings. On the cover of a wonderful catalog from Bernard Quaritch Ltd. from

1973 is the following quotation from Hamlet:x "You shall do marvellous

wisely ... to make inquiry of his behaviour" (act II, scene 1). What John Collins has done here is just that: he has examined minutely the activities

of Wise and Forman over the years of their acquaintance and has shown

what each contributed to what is perhaps the most famous series of forg

eries in the history of letters.

But Collins has done even more than this: he has offered a biography of

both men, beginning at their births and before and showing how their sta

tions in life and their voracious book-collecting appetites may have con

tributed to their hunger for fame and wealth, both of which the income

from the forgeries brought them.

As far back as 1972 Collins was digging into the story. In that year he

published a wonderful article on discrepancies between Forman's "manu

script accounts and his printed accounts" (p. 503) of certain Morris pam

phlets,2 which were suspect for a number of reasons, not the least of which

is the slightly reduced size of the printed illustration contained in one of

them. Such reduction could have come only from photographic reproduc tion. Collins says, "As we have two other examples of the use of this 'cop

ied block' dated 1888 and 1890, the only alternative explanation to that of

fraudulent imitation is innocent imitation by the original printers who

continuously lost and then found the original?which clearly will not do"

Libraries and Culture, Vol. 28, No. 2, Spring 1993 ?1993 by the University of Texas Press, P.O. Box 7819, Austin, TX 78713



211

(p. 508). This is followed by a minute and painstaking analysis, forerunner

to the type of work Collins has continued in The Two Forgers? The first five chapters of the present work study the childhood and ca

reer of Forman, with his long and distinguished career in the post office

and his fine work as the editor of Keats and Shelley. This is followed by a

briefer biographical section on Wise, indicating when the two met, when

the forgeries began (in 1887), and the social, commercial, and literary con

ditions under which the pamphlets were issued.

Of course, this is a biography, but who reads about Wise and Forman for

biography? Naturally we are interested in forgery in general and their forg eries in particular. And Collins focuses the entire volume on these topics,

frequently showing Forman's skills in his profession and how these skills were adaptable to his nefarious endeavors with the forgeries. He points out, for instance, how "Forman gradually seeped into the literary scene of

which he became a minor, if not greatly loved member" (p. 40). And he

discusses Forman's "relationship with Richard Hengist Home . . . which

started him on a fatal path" (p. 41). The real fun for readers seeking information about the forgeries them

selves starts in chapter 5, "The Forgeries Begin" (pp. 81-96). Using a

minute examination of all the evidence, Collins peels away layers of obfus

cation about the publication of these enigmatic little pamphlets. And the

evidence is not slight. When Pollard and Carter first exposed the forger ies,4 they had to be circumspect and tactful. They could not come right out

and say who the culprits were.5 In his introduction to the Quaritch catalog (see note 1), Pollard says, "The unstated implication of [the] facts was

that these pamphlets had been forged by T. J. Wise" (p. 1). The name was

"unstated" primarily because of Carter and Pollard's reluctance to attack

publicly someone who had been a pillar in the bibliographical community. They knew that Wise would have his champions; but they also knew that

their evidence was ironclad and irrefutable.

Collins's book spells it out in minute detail. As early as 1934 Forman was implicated when a document came to light that had until then been hidden. As Pollard explains it (p. 2):

Towards the end of 1934 the late Professor W. A.Jackson, who was

then librarian to Mr. Carl H. Pforzheimer of New York, told us that the Pforzheimer Library included the proof sheets of Harry Buxton Forman's article on The Building of the Idylls, which was printed in 1896 in the second volume o? Literary Anecdotes of the Nineteenth Century, edited by T. J, Wise. These proofs contained on the margins an angry exchange between Wise and Forman. Forman criticised Wise's use of

the phrase "Printed for a few friends only" and maintained that there could be no honest reason for putting "a few" rather than the



212 L&CIBooks, Bibliographies, and Forgeries

precise number. To which Wise retorted: "Quite so and we print

'Last Tournament' in 1896 and want 'someone to think' it was

printed in 1871! The moral position is exactly the same!" Mr.

Pforzheimer did not release this document until eleven years later

when he allowed Miss F. E. Ratchford to publish it at Austin, Texas. . . . Other bits of evidence for Forman's involvement have since come

to light, but this was the first and until now the most important.

Collins cites the Pforzheimer document, spends a good deal of time rumi

nating about it and other pieces of evidence that convict Forman as well as

Wise, and adds that, while much correspondence still survives, there is a

curious gap in this area of evidence. Apparently Forman's son Maurice, or

someone else, has purged the letter files of incriminating evidence.6 But

Collins displays enough evidence to convict both men.

We are shown Wise's devious tactics in trying to foist his fakes on the

market. At one point Collins explains how Wise, after forging a Swinburne

text, decides that the best way to dupe the public into thinking the item is

genuine is to do the "definitive" bibliography of Swinburne and enter his

creations into it?which Wise proceeds to do. Collins puts it like this: "An

other good method of authentication is to become the expert on Swin

burne and effectively become judge and jury in your own case. This is just what Wise did: his first bibliography of Swinburne appeared in 1897, the

second in 1919/20, the third in 1925 and the fourth in 1927" (p. 86). He

adds that "Swinburne was the first victim of the new team" (p. 86), point

ing out that writers like Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Robert Browning, Tenny son, Wordsworth, and others were later victims.

Another thing Collins does admirably is detail the work of others who

doubted the authenticity of the questioned imprints. It may be no surprise to some that the three main areas of evidence ?textual, paper, and type

?

used to prove the pamphlets forgeries were already broached by scholars

before Carter and Pollard's expos?. Collins shows how others had pointed to the conspicuous absence of the pamphlets in earlier and reliable bibli

ographies; had gotten statements from the pamphlets' authors that they themselves were unaware of these imprints; had questioned the authentic

ity of the pamphlets on the basis of the fact that more than one printer was

employed for a single work (see pp. 143-144); had doubted the pamphlets'

genuineness on the grounds that the text was "merely

a pirated reprint"

(p. 145); and had questioned the very types that the pamphlets were

printed in.7 Collins also indicates which pamphlets are condemned partly on the basis of their forged wrappers.

Other wonderful and astonishing facts emerge in this biography, not the

least of which is the horrible depredations Wise visited upon books in the

British Library. "As the forgeries slackened off, Wise turned to theft in or



213

der to prime his book collecting pump. . . . From some fifty plays [in the

British Museum collection], Wise tore out about 300 leaves, using these

stolen pages to perfect his own copies and these he sold to Wrenn and oth

ers" (p. 179). And Collins properly goes beyond an impartial retelling of the tale in judging Wise's actions: "Wise seriously damaged important and

historic books when he ripped the leaves out and showed wanton disregard for the very objects to which he had devoted his scholarly and collecting career" (p. 181).

While I have a great deal of praise for this volume, I have a few small

quibbles as well. One of the little frustrations I had with this otherwise excellent book was the peculiar way that sources were cited ?if they were

cited at all. Rather than footnotes or bibliographical entries, Collins has a

little section after the main text that he calls "Notes." Each note is a prose

paragraph or two in which he mentions his sources. But in many cases

these sources are carelessly tied to the text, and in some cases the source of

some material in the text is not given at all. For example, no source is given

for the Swinburne letter quoted on page 83. The book has many illustra

tions, not always perfectly relevant to the text, and not always with illu

minating captions.8 For instance, the caption for illustration 63 (p. 268) merely says, "The first two books which Wise collected, the foundation of the Ashley Library." The real point about these books we learn five pages later: they epitomize the rather shaky quality of the books in Wise's col lection. Most of his books "are either rebound or in rough contemporary

condition" (p. 273). And some of Collins's digressions about peripheral people

or events seem out of place and not focused on Forman, Wise, or the

forgeries. Also bothersome were the typographical errors and Collins's somewhat erratic use of punctuation. For example, Collins has Wise giving

Gosse a copy of a George Eliot forgery in 1986 (p. 155). The book has an excellent index. It also has a brief appendix (pp. 295

304) of correspondence between Wise and Forman, tantalizing in its not

really revealing anything that we don't already know. But in gathering and

reprinting these for us, Collins has certainly done his homework on this book and has offered us a wealth of information. The appendix even ends

with a note appended titled "STOP PRESS," in which Collins mentions the discovery of another forgery, Tennyson's To the Queen of 1863, with a

notation that "Mr. Lasner will be publishing a full account in The Book Collector" (p. 304). All this gives us the impression that this is truly the latest word on the subject, but that there is much more to be said.

My quibbles with this volume are few. This is a tremendously entertain

ing and informative book. While it is not perfect, its imperfections are small compared to the value it has for us in exposing the rogues who built

reputations and wealth on their ill-gotten income. We learn of the forgers' tactics in printing and distributing the works; the lines of inquiry pursued



214 L&C I Books, Bibliographies, and Forgeries

by the critics; the way the pamphlets fared on the rare book market; a good deal about the book trade and book collecting in the early decades of this

century; about printing, paper, type, and book distribution; and much

more.

The advertising brochure for this book from Oak Knoll Books calls it

"the final chapter in this famous affair." But Collins gives one the impres

sion, right down to the "STOP PRESS" note at the end of the appendix, that there is more to know, and that we still may be enlightened with dis

coveries yet to be made. But for now we are indebted to Collins for all of his

work on this case, of which The Two Forgers is the latest chapter.

Notes

1. A Catalogue of Books and Pamphlets from the Library of Maurice Buxton Forman

(London: Quaritch, 1973); catalog no. 926.

2. John Collins, "Harry Buxton Forman and William Morris: A Preliminary

Enquiry," Book Collector 21/4 (Winter 1972): 503-523. 3. Also, in 1988 Collins teamed up with Nicolas Barker to write A Sequel to an

Enquiry into the Nature of Certain Nineteenth Century Pamphlets by John Carter & Graham

Pollard: The Book Forgeries ofH. Buxton Forman and T.J. Wise Re-examined (New Castle,

Del.: Oak Knoll Books; rpt. 1992). 4. The oft-cited and now classic study is that of John Carter and Graham Pol

lard, An Enquiry into the Nature of Certain Nineteenth Century Pamphlets (London: Con

stable, 1934; rpt. New York: Haskell House, 1971; rpt. New Castle, Del.: Oak

Knoll, 1983). 5. Or, more properly, "who the culprit was," since at the time it looked as if

Wise was the primary if not the sole forger. 6. Another relative involved, as Collins indicates, is Forman's brother Alfred,

who supplied the paper for many of the pamphlets. "One of the fake Morris wrap

pers survives in a proof with Alfred Forman's initials on it. Having spent twelve

years in the paper trade he supplied all the paper needed for most of Harry's le

gitimate prints and (presumably) for the forgeries as well. He may have had some

inkling of what his brother was up to ... "

(p. 143). 7. Robert Proctor was apparently the first to notice the type evidence. Collins

quotes his piece from the Athenaeum of 22 June 1898: "The types in which [the pam

phlet] is printed differ wholly from those used by the Chiswick Press ..." (p. 134).

8. For example, illustration 54 shows, as the caption tells us, "Wise's manu

script draft cataloguing of a play" (p. 218). The facing page has illustration 55 (not

laid out on the page in such a way as to distinguish it clearly from the text), with

the caption "The printed version." Nowhere is there an explanation of why these

illustrations are important for our understanding of the text of the book, nor is

there a reason given for or any discussion of the discrepancies between the manu

script version and the printed one.



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