Why did he neglect to include the first A.L.S. Peter and a chatty little epistle from Mary Magdalene to the King of the Burgundians. Luke, Plato, Pliny, Alexander the Great, and Pompey! There was a letter from Cleopatra to Caesar, discussing their son Cesarion a note from Lazarus to St. But these were only the less remarkable items of the collection the gems included letters from Sappho, Virgil, Julius Caesar, St. The documents and letters included letters from Pascal (by the hundred), from Shakespeare (twenty-seven of them), hundreds from Rabelias, and others from Newton, from Louis XIV, from the Cid, from Galileo. Michel Chasles, who between 18 bought more than twenty-seven thousand forgeries, and paid out 150,000 francs for them.'Ī man with a meager education, colossal assurance, and a strong right arm concocted these forgeries, and he must have worked at an average rate of about eight a day over a long period of years.

One such forgery which Pearson describes is the curious case of the 'eminent French mathematician, M. The literary hoax can be an elaborate practical joke of sorts, intended to make the book collector seem a fool, or the literary hoax can be a forgery, where ill gotten money, not mockery, is the intended result. There are two chapters devoted to the literary hoax. But other than the bird chapter, Black or Red is one of the most delightful books of the genre I have read to date. I read the bird essay to the end, looking for the books to make an appearance (after all, this is a book about books - says so in the title), but to no avail. And really, before I can set forth about The Library, I must speak of the book which led to The Library, which is today's repast, Books In Black or Red by Edmund Lester Pearson.īlack or Red is a book of essays on books, book collectors, literary hoaxes, now forgotten classics, and one lone, strange chapter about a parrot.

But as I mentioned in my previous post, my introduction to the books-about-books genre turned into a post in itself, and that The Library would have to wait for another day. I had originally intended to do a write up of The Library, by Andrew Lang, a book I'm currently enjoying.

Bored nothing to do by peter spier