Fictions and Fakes
Forging Romantic Authenticity, 1760–1845

This 2006 book is a major reinterpretation of how Romantic writers distinguished their fictions from the fakes surrounding them.

Margaret Russett (Author)

9780521850780, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 2 February 2006

278 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.7 cm, 0.54 kg

Review of the hardback: '… one of the most stimulating books in studies in British Romanticism to have appeared in recent years. Margaret Russett succeeds in refocusing the general field of late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century writing around the topic of literary and cultural fakes, forgeries, plagiarisms and hoaxes, which she locates at the heart of the Romantic project.' Studies in Hogg and his World

British Romantic literature descends from a line of impostors, forgers and frauds. Through a series of case-studies - beginning with the golden age of forgery in the late eighteenth century and continuing through canonical Romanticism and its aftermath - Margaret Russett demonstrates how Romantic writers distinguished their fictions from the fakes surrounding them. This 2006 book examines canonical and lesser-known Romantic works alongside fakes such as Thomas Chatterton's medieval poems and 'Caraboo', the impostor-princess. Through original readings of works by Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Walter Scott, John Clare, and James Hogg, as well as chapters on impostors in popular culture, Russett's interdisciplinary and wide-ranging study offers a major reinterpretation of Romanticism and its continuing influence today.

Introduction
1. From fake to fiction: toward a Romantic theory of imposture
2. Chatterton's primal scene of writing
3. Unconscious plagiarism: from 'Christabel' to the Lay of the Last Minstrel
4. The delusions of Hope
5. The 'Caraboo' hoax: Romantic woman as mirror and mirage
6. Clare Byron
7. The Gothic violence of the letter
Bibliography.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: general [DSB]