ARNOLD, MATTHEW. 1822-1888. -- [WISE, THOMAS JAMES. 1859-1937, FORGER]. Saint Brandan. London: ...

ARNOLD, MATTHEW. 1822-1888. -- [WISE, THOMAS JAMES. 1859-1937, FORGER]. Saint Brandan. London: E.W. & A. Skipwith, 1867 [But printed by Richard Clay and Sons for Thomas J. Wise c. 1890]. 8vo (190 x 134 mm). Uncut as issued, in brown printed wrappers. Corners lightly bumped or creased, a clean copy. Housed in a morocco pull off slipcase and chemise. FIRST AND ONLY EDITION of this fabrication, a celebrated nineteenth-century creative forgery by Thomas J. Wise. One of the most famous fabrications in bibliographical history. Matthew Arnold's poem was originally published in Fraser's Magazine in 1860 and subsequently collected in his New Poems (1867). Wise cleverly created this fictitious 'privately printed' precursor to exploit the nineteenth-century market for rare, first-appearance pamphlets. The title page bears the spurious imprint of the non-existent publishers 'E. W. & A. Smyth.' The fraud was definitively exposed in Carter and Pollard's landmark 1934 exposé, An Enquiry into the Nature of Certain Nineteenth Century Pamphlets, using microscopic analysis of the paper and typography. This copy is printed on chemical wood pulp paper (not introduced in Britain until 1874) using Richard Clay's 'kernless' Long Primer No. 3 typeface (not cut until 1880), rendering the 1867 imprint date a physical impossibility. While many surviving examples from Wise's stock are found as unstitched sheets, the present lot represents the variant as prepared for immediate deceptive distribution, neatly stitched into original wrappers and boasting uncommonly large, untrimmed margins. Carter & Pollard, An Enquiry..., pp. 161-162; Todd, Handlist, 6f. For further information on this lot please visit Bonhams.com For further information about this lot please visit the lot listing