I first discovered the story of Thomas Wise and the 19th Century Pamphlets via two reviews – one from Dorothy L. Sayers and one from Anthony Boucher. They were reviewing two different books, but seemed to find the real life case they both centred on to be a fascinating example of a real-life detective story. Faced with these endorsements, I had to look up the Enquiry Into the Nature of Certain Nineteenth Century Pamphlets – and I quickly became obsessed. Since reading that book I’ve tried to find out as much about the “case” as possible. When I heard that a new book had been written about the forgeries, I was thrilled. The Book Forger presents the whole story of the fraud, from before its beginning, and from multiple perspectives. Where the Enquiry took a scientific approach to the facts, The Book Forger takes a narrative approach.
The first two-thirds of The Book Forger ping-pongs back and forth between subjects each chapter. Half track Thomas Wise’s rise in eminence through the late 1800s to the turn of the century, from his lower-class background to his position (before his exposure) as a wealthy bibliographic authority. Hone also talks about the book-collecting scene at the time, and exactly why Wise’s forgeries were so clever, convincing, and lucrative. It’s undeniable that Wise worked extremely hard to achieve what he did – it’s also undeniable that he was utterly unscrupulous in his methods. He conned, bullied, and stole his way to the top despite the class prejudice he faced – with such a lack of conscience that it’s difficult to feel sympathy for him.
The other chapters follow Graham Pollard, and later, John Carter as well. Pollard understandably gets more focus, since in 2017 it was revealed he was an MI5 spy, tasked with monitoring Communist activities within the UK. The inclusion of spying into the tale isn’t just for the thrill of covert operations revealed, though. Joseph Hone convincingly links Pollard’s experience as a spy to the success of the Enquirers’ investigation.
The book joins Pollard before he turns spy, with his life as a Bohemian Communist bibliophile at Oxford University. Eventually he ends up working at a bookseller’s in London, where he meets the debonair John Carter, and the two become friends. The pair each independently become suspicious about the legitimacy of certain 19th century pamphlets, and the investigation begins…
For newcomers, the anachronistic paper, the crook-backed f, and the alien question mark will all be as fascinating as Sayers and Boucher found them – Hone gets the salient details across without spending time bogged down in technical details. These are the results of the investigation. The details and process of the investigation itself were completely new to me. It says a lot for the quality of Hone’s writing, as well as the inherent details of the story, that I was gripped by the book despite already knowing how it would pan out. I hadn’t grasped the struggles the pair had to face in pulling off their investigation, and how well they played their hand in order to expose a seemingly-unassailable authority figure.
The dual narrative keeps interest high, in the style of an inverted mystery. Even as Wise reaches greater heights, the reader is constantly reminded that his downfall is approaching, and eventually, loose ends that Wise leaves in the earlier time-frame are picked up by the Enquirers in the later one. I do wonder if this structure might be difficult to follow for those unfamiliar with the story – at times I think I was only keeping up with it due to knowing what was going to happen. If it’s new to you, you’ll have to make sure you’re really paying attention.
At the two-thirds mark, all the pieces are in place, and from then on we follow the story of the preparation, release, results, and reverberations of the Enquiry. It’s quite a rush to watch how Carter and Pollard handle things, and if the aftermath doesn’t pan out as they hoped, that is in a way more interesting in terms of history.
The overall thread of the story was so well-told and effective that I wondered how much of it was documented, and how much was embellished. Perhaps you’ve read a narrative history like that – where the world of facts fades into speculation without any warning from the author. Well, that does not seem to be the case here – though the footnotes are not indicated in the main text, they’re there at the back, detailed and in abundance. Scenes have certainly been “dramatized” to some extent, but all the dialogue comes, as far as I can tell, from first-hand sources. My only quibble is the treatment of Wise’s co-conspirator Harry Buxton Forman, which seemed to involve un-footnoted statements about Forman’s state of mind. I do find Forman a fascinating character from the other reading I’ve done, so I was a little disappointed by the lack of focus on him, though I think it’s understandable given Hone has to work with three main characters already. That aside, the footnotes are well worth a skim through, as they add plenty of context to the text.
Hone also adds context by bringing world events of the time into the narrative. The Stock Market Crash of 1929 plays a part – as does detective fiction itself. Sherlock Holmes is a role model for the new “forensic bibliography”. Dorothy L. Sayers shows up – I was delighted to see just how relevant the Golden Age of Detection was to the milieu around Pollard and Carter. There are some odd attempts to link Holmes and Wimsey to the investigation, but they didn’t work for me. Fortunately the rest of the book is good enough that this doesn’t matter.
In the Further Reading section, Joseph Hone suggests that the original Enquiry Into the Nature of Certain Nineteenth Century Pamphlets (which I hope to do a proper review of soon) is “extraordinary” and “well worth seeking out”. I completely agree. Though it’s not horrifically rare, you’re not going to be finding it in your local bookshop – you’ll have to go looking for it. So, along with its other qualities, The Book Forger keeps the flame of these fascinating crimes and their history alive. It’s a great story, and deserves to be remembered. Not only does The Book Forger do that, it also expands it, adds context to it, and adds character to it. There couldn’t be a better way for the Forgers and the Enquirers to have their day in the sun once again.