Thomas J. Wise in the Original Cloth. The Life and Record of the Forger of the Nineteenth-Century Pamphlets. With an appendix by George Bernard Shaw

Dawsons of Pall Mall, Folkestone, 1974 reprint of the 1946 first edition. Cloth, 8vo, 24 cm,. 372 pp, plates. A reprint of the classic biographical and bibliographical account of Wise, which was expanded from the American edition published in 1939 as "Forging Ahead ". Highly readable, well-illustrated and fascinating. "This work, first published in America in 1939, and issued in a revised and extended British edition in 1947, is the first biographical and critical study of the perpetrator of the most original and extensive series of forgeries in British literary history, and as such it remains a standard work for students of bibliography. Wise, a wealthy merchant, was renowned as a bookman, a collector, and as the compiler of a unique group of bibliographies and catalogues. In 1934, towards the close of his brilliant career, it was revealed that over fifty pamphlets by such authors as the Brownings, Swinburne, Kipling and Ruskin whose rarity and importance he had made known, were mostly forgeries. Wilfred Partington's study is based on information given to him by Wise, and the (then) exclusive use of private papers of well known men with whom Wise formed associations. He clearly establishes Wise's guilt and tells how the fraudulent printings were 'promoted'. The drama of the exposure, the shock of the British Museum authorities who had bought Wise's library for the nation are given full treatment too. The appendix, by George Bernard Shaw gives his own view of Wise and his friends and another gives a detailed bibliography of Wise's works both genuine and fraudulent." - from the blurb. Very small dent to front board, otherwise Very Good in a lightly soiled and slightly torn dustwrapper.