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The Emily Dickinson Journal 11.2 (2002) 114-123



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Review Essay

The Poet and the Murderer:
A True Story of Literary Crime and the Art of Forgery


Worrall, Simon. The Poet and the Murderer: A True Story of Literary Crime and the Art of Forgery. New York: Dutton, 2002.

In June 1997 the Jones Library, the town library of Amherst, Massachusetts, purchased at Sotheby's auction house what appeared to be a manuscript in her own hand of a new poem by Emily Dickinson. The Curator of Special Collections at the Jones, Daniel Lombardo, archivist and historian, bid on the document, with funds raised in part through efforts and contributions made by members of the Emily Dickinson International Society. The society's annual meeting had been held in Amherst just days before the sale, and $21,000 purchased a forgery by one of the most prolific and successful forgers of historical and literary documents in American history. According to a forensic documents examiner for the Salt Lake City Police Department, Mark Hofmann, best known for his "Mormon forgeries," produced over a thousand documents by 129 different people. In a "true crime" saga, journalist Simon Worrall proposes to tell a story of the "fifteen-line poem in the style of Emily Dickinson" [jacket] that amounted to "a brilliantly constructed engine of deception" (63).

Worrall begins his narrative with the purchase of the manuscript and the discovery of the forgery, then proceeds to the uncovering of the document's provenance (its chain of ownership and record of sales). He [End Page 114] follows with the investigation of the role played by Sotheby's in promoting a manuscript whose history, at the time of the sale, could have been traced to Hofmann, in prison in Utah since 1987 for two murders committed to cover up forgeries and financial schemes involving near extortion of the Church of Latter Day Saints. Overall, though Worrall's storytelling is sometimes suspenseful and compelling, the book fails as a study of Hofmann's forgeries due to reductive, sensationalizing commentaries on Dickinson and also on Joseph Smith, prophet and founder of Mormonism.

Worrall's title is misleading, his coverage of "the poet" and "the murderer" disproportionate. He focuses much more on Hofmann than on Dickinson, and despite the book jacket's claim that the Dickinson-style poem is his "greatest forgery," Hofmann's most influential deceptions involve documents that attempted to embarrass the churchby discrediting Smith's revelations and rewriting the early history of Mormonism. Once Worrall has told the story of the Dickinson forgery's purchase and detection, he concentrates on the "Mormon forgeries."

The Hofmann case continues to fascinate, and Worrall shows Hofmann's genius, acquainting or reacquainting readers with key events in a story too dramatic and dazzling, from a marketing point of view, for readers to miss or forget. The reopening of this story—with material added that sheds new light on Hofmann's extraordinary techniques, on his wife as a possible accomplice, and on his life in Utah State Prison—would appear to be Worrall's primary goal, rather than an investigation of the Dickinson forgery.

Opening sections on detection and "auction artifice" are among the book's most successful chapters in regard to the Dickinson material. Worrall is to be credited for saying in print that Sotheby's knew at the time of the sale that the manuscript could be traced to Hofmann and was therefore suspect, and for detailing Sotheby's strategies of obfuscation and delay as Lombardo and Ralph Franklin worked to uncover the manuscript's provenance. Worrall stood up to a legal team who for several years prevented him (and other writers) from telling the story in one of the major periodicals that had expressed interest, among them Harper's Magazine and The Atlantic Monthly. Sotheby's position is that the auction house was merely an agent for the sale and therefore one of Hofmann's victims. Yet in 1985 [End Page 115] Sotheby's had refunded the price of...

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