Abstract
William Henry Ireland, “otherwise Shakspeare,” was a late eighteenth-century literary forger. By the time he was twentyone he had produced a substantial archive of Shakespearean manuscripts, had his supposedly original new Shakespeare play Vortigern performed at Drury Lane, confessed to the forgery, been disowned by his father, revealed to be the illegitimate child of the housekeeper, and written his autobiography. He spent the remainder of his life as a Grub Street hack, counterfeiting his Shakespearean forgeries for collectors of curiosities. He died in 1835.
The critics often invent authors: they select two dissimilar works—the Tao Te Ching and the 1001 Nights, say—attribute them to the same writer and then determine most scrupulously the psychology of this interesting homme de lettres. . .
—Jorge Luis Borges,“Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius”1
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Notes
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© 2004 Timothy Morton
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Groom, N. (2004). William Henry Ireland: From Forgery To Fish ’N’ Chips. In: Morton, T. (eds) Cultures of Taste/Theories of Appetite: Eating Romanticism. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781403981394_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781403981394_2
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
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