[COMPLETE] Frauds, Forgeries, and Fake News Collection 01 - tg

[AdamBielka]

"GROUP - Frauds, Forgeries, and Fake News Collection 01" by Various ( - 0).

This project is now complete! All audio files can be found on our catalog page: https://librivox.org/frauds-forgeries-and-fake-news-collection-by-various/

The point of this collection is to showcase fabricated documents and stories throughout history, and the diversity of purposes and contexts they were deployed in. It also will include second-hand accounts of frauds [elaborate description as collection becomes more fleshed-out]. ( )

• 1. How to claim a part, and "how it all works" here Please follow the guidelines in the quote above and in the list at the bottom of this post. Please post your proposed reading in this thread so we can confirm it fits with the intentions of the project, or if you'd like to offer or receive suggestions for something to work on, or need help determining if a work is in the public domain. Read points 6 to 8 below for what to do before, during and after your recording.
  2. New to recording? Please read our Newbie Guide to Recording!
  3. Is there a deadline? No, this will be catalogued when it reaches 10 entries, or when readers' interest is lost for more than 3 months consecutively, whichever comes first. We will catalog a minimum of 5 entries.
  4. Where do I find the text? There are some suggestions in the thread below. Otherwise, please post your suggested text. If in doubt, please get it checked by posting here FIRST.
  5. If this is your first recording, please let me know under which name or pseudonym you'd like to appear in the LibriVox catalogue. We can also link to a personal website/blog.
     
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  6. BEFORE recording: Please check the Recording Notes: viewtopic.php?p=6430#p6430
     
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     START of recording (Intro)
     • "[Book/article/work title], [Chapter/Section/Part number, if applicable]. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information, or to volunteer, please visit: librivox DOT org"
     • If you wish, say: "Recording by [your name], [city, your blog, podcast, web address]"
     • Say:
       "[Title], purportedly by [supposed author's name], actual author [real author's name]. [Text]"
     
     END of recording
     • At the end of the section, say:
       "End of [Title], by [Author]"
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     Save files as
     128 kbps MP3
     fffn01_titleinoneword_authorsurname_yourinitials_128kb.mp3 (all lower-case) where ## is the section number (e.g. fffn01_donationofconstantine_unknown_ab_128kb.mp3)
     
     
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     Rules for Inclusion.
     
     While I've made some initial suggestions for inclusion, the point of the project is crowd-source ideas people have come across. So please feel encouraged to nominate additions so long as they....
     
     1. Are widely understood to be intentionally made up or faked by the author in question. If it's possible it was an honest mistake, or a genuine misguided belief of the author, don't include it.
     
     2. The work does not have any significant population of defenders of the author's honesty or believers in the document's veracity presently alive.
     
     3. Are the work itself, rather than a reported account or story of the forgery.
     
     4. Try to keep to selections to a manageable size if they come from a much larger work.
     
     5. [addendum Aug-11-20] The collection has now been had its criteria expanded to included first or second hand accounts of fraud.
     
     Source Links .
     
     Some suggestions...
     
     An historical and geographical description of Formosa (Story of a Frenchman claiming to be raised in Taiwan)
     https://archive.org/details/historicalgeogr00psal/page/n21/mode/2up
     
     Great astronomical discoveries (Popular news article about aliens living on the moon, meant to sell papers)
     https://archive.org/details/moonhoax00Lock/page/20/mode/2up
     
     Donation of Constantine (forged Imperial document giving Church certain legal rights)
     https://archive.org/details/ErnestF.HendersonSelectHistoricalDocumentsOfTheMiddleAges/page/n337/mode/2up
     
     Poems of Ossian (Works of a 'lost' Ancient Gaelic poet, written by a 1700s Scotsman)
     https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Poems_of_Ossian
     
     Sketch of the Mosquito Shore (An account of a made-up country where you can totally buy cheap land from the author)
     https://archive.org/details/sketchmosquitos00conggoog/page/n376/mode/2up
     
     
     Any questions?
     Please post below

[KevinS]

It would be helpful to see a few examples of what you are suggesting.

[AdamBielka]

Some initial suggestions ?


Sketch of the Mosquito Shore: v-viii; 338-355. (fake travel guide meant to bolster a land investment scheme in a fake country)
https://archive.org/details/sketchmosquitos00conggoog/page/n376/mode/2up

An historical and geographical description of Formosa: 145-167?; 214-223? (French guy talking about growing up in a fantasy version of Taiwan)
https://archive.org/details/historicalgeogr00psal/page/n21/mode/2up

Great astronomical discoveries: 21-50? (Reports of aliens living on the moon intent to sell newspapers by the New York Sun)
https://archive.org/details/moonhoax00Lock/page/20/mode/2up

[EDIT]
The Donation of Constantine: (Fake imperial document claiming to give church certain legal powers)
https://archive.org/details/ErnestF.HendersonSelectHistoricalDocumentsOfTheMiddleAges/page/n337/mode/2up (pages 319-329)

Protocols of Elders of Zion (fabricated minutes claiming to be by Jews intent on world domination, very influential early twentieth-century anti-antisemitism )
https://archive.org/details/protocolsofthelearnedeldersofzion/page/n3/mode/2up

Poems of Ossian (allegegly ancient Gaelic poems made up by a Scotsman) https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Poems_of_Ossian (Maybe the War of Caros: A Poem? Most are pretty bite-sized, any would do)

Lincoln Love Letters
https://archive.org/details/lincolnforgeries01linc/page/n31/mode/2up

Vortigern: An Historical Tragedy in Five Acts Fake 'lost' Shakespeare play :
https://d.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/text/ireland-vortigern (maybe one of the soliloquies or a duet scene?)

Murchison Letter... still got some trouble tracking down the actual text.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murchison_letter

Poems of Thomas Rowley (forged medieval poetry)
http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/13037/pg13037-images.html

The English Mercurie
https://web.archive.org/web/20120308034734/http://www.exmsft.com/~davidco/History/drake4.htm

[annise]

I think maybe your genres may confuse readers, surely what you are after is fiction? The writers knew it wasn't true.

Anne

[TriciaG]

But Anne, they were apparently written to deceive, and not written such that people knew they were fiction.

I'm willing to MC this, but I think you're going to have a hard time getting readers to find works on their own. It's such a narrow category, and the available texts are few, I'd think. It will be hard for readers to find something without having it in mind from the first.

You could set up sections with the works you've found and have people read them, like a regular-type project, and in addition you could invite readers to submit other works that they've found. But I'm not optimistic about finding many of those.

So I'd suggest putting either a section limit or a time limit on this. For example, "This will be cataloged when we reach 5 sections, or on September 1st, whichever comes first." (Just throwing out a number and date as an example.)

What do you think?

EDIT: Also, are you asking for texts that describe famous hoaxes (such as that Catholic Encyclopedia article), the hoax text itself, or both?

[annise]

Are you saying "The Third Eye" should be classified as non fiction? and any novel that starts - "Whilst wandering on the coast one day
I found a sealed rum bottle containing the manuscript that follows" should be classified as nonfiction? (it was a very big bottle )
I'm still arguing via email about the flat earth books nonfiction classification.

Anne

[TriciaG]

I don't know anything about The Third Eye. But a novel, that the author intends as a novel, is fiction. A book that is written, that the author believes is true in all sincerity (but is sincerely wrong) is nonfiction. Otherwise we'd have to research all old science works and decide if they're "true enough" to be nonfiction. And don't get started on the debate about religious texts!

A book written to convince others of something the author knows to be false? That's the muddy area. The author would publish it as nonfiction.

[KevinS]

I fear it's not exactly what Adam is looking for, but I think accounts of frauds, forgeries, and deceptions would be interesting. And it rather makes clear its label, too.

[Kazbek]

I fear that the proposed criteria may be difficult to apply in a clear-cut way. For older texts, the origins (and hence intentions of the original authors) may be unknown or subject to debate. For some false stories that appeared in newspapers, it may be difficult to determine whether the authors believed the story themselves, or knew it to be false, or didn't care much one way or the other. The existence of a current base of support can also be difficult to ascertain, particularly for religious apocrypha. In any case, Wikipedia has a category on this subject:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Document_forgeries

Michael

[Kazbek]

I fear it's not exactly what Adam is looking for, but I think accounts of frauds, forgeries, and deceptions would be interesting. And it rather makes clear its label, too.

There's at least one PD book on the subject:

Literary Forgeries by James Anson Farrer. Publication date 1907
https://archive.org/details/literaryforgeri00farrgoog/mode/2up

Michael

[AdamBielka]

But Anne, they were apparently written to deceive, and not written such that people knew they were fiction.

I'm willing to MC this, but I think you're going to have a hard time getting readers to find works on their own. It's such a narrow category, and the available texts are few, I'd think. It will be hard for readers to find something without having it in mind from the first.

You could set up sections with the works you've found and have people read them, like a regular-type project, and in addition you could invite readers to submit other works that they've found. But I'm not optimistic about finding many of those.

So I'd suggest putting either a section limit or a time limit on this. For example, "This will be cataloged when we reach 5 sections, or on September 1st, whichever comes first." (Just throwing out a number and date as an example.)

What do you think?

EDIT: Also, are you asking for texts that describe famous hoaxes (such as that Catholic Encyclopedia article), the hoax text itself, or both?

This is a lot of good advice! Thank you so much for offering it.

I like the idea of the limit- time or amount.

I'd be interested in seeing what other people might find for this. But I have no issue with curating and coming up with further suggestions, I suspect more will come up. The four initial ones I found where what inspired this collection, but I'm sure there's more, and I can probably find given a bit more time. I'd be interested in doing some more digging.

I was intending the documents themselves, rather than outside descriptions. I posted the wrong link with the Catholic Encylcopedia Article:
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Select_Historical_Documents_of_the_Middle_Ages/Book_III/The_Donation_of_Constantine

However, I'd be open to making the boundaries a bit more open, especially if someone was really excited about a source? But I was hoping for a "In their own words" consistency of the frauds.

[AdamBielka]

I think maybe your genres may confuse readers, surely what you are after is fiction? The writers knew it wasn't true.

Anne

I'm not really sure. I think if authorial intent is to come across as true to an audience, its non-fiction. But it's a fuzzy category.

[TriciaG]

I've done some major reworking of the first post, using an old Insomnia Collection project as a template. Adam, please check it over (especially the deadline part) and see if you are happy with it or if you want to change anything.

I changed some of the instructions, as well as intros/outros and file name structure. So please re-read the whole thing carefully.

(I also added the stipulation at the bottom that it's to be the original fraud rather than an accounting of it.)

Once you give a final OK on the first post and the plan, I'll make a MW and we'll get started.

[AdamBielka]

I've done some major reworking of the first post, using an old Insomnia Collection project as a template. Adam, please check it over (especially the deadline part) and see if you are happy with it or if you want to change anything.

I changed some of the instructions, as well as intros/outros and file name structure. So please re-read the whole thing carefully.

(I also added the stipulation at the bottom that it's to be the original fraud rather than an accounting of it.)

Once you give a final OK on the first post and the plan, I'll make a MW and we'll get started.

This looks great! Maybe we could put a floor on the number with either minimum of 5 or maximum of 10?

One clarification issue I'd maybe like to see is something on how to deal with the difference between actual authors and ascribed authors, since a lot of things in this genre seem likely to make false attributions, which aren't really the same thing as pseudonyms?

"Donation of Constantine, purportedly by Emperor Constantine I, actual author unknown. "

"Excerpts from Sketch of the Mosquito Shore, purportedly by Thomas Strangeways, actual author Gregor MacGregor."

"Great Astronomical Discoveries, purportedly by the Edinburgh Journal of Science, actual author Richard Adams Locke"

"Excerpts from An historical and geographical description of Formosa, by George Psalmanazar."

For the purpose of the catalog, citing either anon or the genuine author (if known) seems more apropriate that whomever it is necessarily ascribed to?

[TriciaG]

One clarification issue I'd maybe like to see is something on how to deal with the difference between actual authors and ascribed authors, since a lot of things in this genre seem likely to make false attributions, which aren't really the same thing as pseudonyms?

"Donation of Constantine, purportedly by Emperor Constantine I, actual author unknown. "

"Excerpts from Sketch of the Mosquito Shore, purportedly by Thomas Strangeways, actual author Gregor MacGregor."

"Great Astronomical Discoveries, purportedly by the Edinburgh Journal of Science, actual author Richard Adams Locke"

"Excerpts from An historical and geographical description of Formosa, by George Psalmanazar."

For the purpose of the catalog, citing either anon or the genuine author (if known) seems more apropriate that whomever it is necessarily ascribed to?

That sounds good to me - naming the supposed author, if there is one, along with the actual one, and using the actual one in the catalog.