possibly the best library hoax
“Jean Nepomucene Auguste Pichauld, Comte de Fortsas, was a man with a singular passion. He collected books of which only one copy was known to exist…. [W]hen he died on September 1, 1839 he possessed only fifty-two books, but each of them was absolutely unique. His heir, not sharing the old man’s passion for book collecting, arranged for an auction to sell off the library”
Compelling no? The auction really happened, the rest of it is made up, the creation of a local antiquarian, having a bit of a practical joke. Read more at blacksundae, or see the auction catalog, itself a rarity, on Google Books.
March 9th, 2010 at 10:23
I want to hear about the other library hoaxes.
My favorite is the Old Librarian’s Almanack supposedly written by Jared Bean in 1773, but actually written by Edmund Lester Pearson, and edited by John Cotton Dana and Henry W. Kent in about 1910.
March 13th, 2010 at 1:05
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March 15th, 2010 at 11:07
Yes, I would like to hear about the other hoaxes as well.