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Mohrbooks Literary Agency
Sebastian Ritscher |
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CAN YOU EVER FORGIVE ME?
Memoirs of a Literary Forger
Now a major motion picture starring Melissa McCarthy, this true story details how Israel forged and sold more than three hundred letters by such literary notables as Dorothy Parker, Edna Ferber, Noel Coward, and many others. And almost got away with it.
Before turning to her life of crime - running a one-woman forgery business out of a phone booth in a Greenwich Village bar and even dodging the FBI - Lee Israel had a legitimate career as an author of biographies. Her first book on Tallulah Bankhead was a New York Times bestseller, and her second, on the late journalist and reporter Dorothy Kilgallen, made a splash in the headlines.
But by 1990, almost broke and desperate to hang onto her Upper West Side studio, Lee made a bold and irreversible career change: inspired by a letter she'd received once from Katharine Hepburn, and armed with her considerable skills as a researcher and celebrity biographer, she began to forge letters in the voices of literary greats. Between 1990 and 1991, she wrote more than three hundred letters in the voices of, among others, Dorothy Parker, Louise Brooks, Edna Ferber, Lillian Hellman, and Noel Coward - and sold the forgeries to memorabilia and autograph dealers.
After almost two years, Lee fell under suspicion when one or two dealers followed up on their hunches that some of her letters weren't authentic. She became the subject of a trial, but avoided jailtime. She was barred for life from all libraries and research facilities in the United States, and though she cooperated with the Feds to recover the original letters in circulation, there are still many of the 300-plus letters she wrote and forged herself still in circulation. Some of them are potentially still unidentified as fakes.
The movie was released in mid-October in the U.S. and critics have hailed it as "brilliant" and "entertaining."
But by 1990, almost broke and desperate to hang onto her Upper West Side studio, Lee made a bold and irreversible career change: inspired by a letter she'd received once from Katharine Hepburn, and armed with her considerable skills as a researcher and celebrity biographer, she began to forge letters in the voices of literary greats. Between 1990 and 1991, she wrote more than three hundred letters in the voices of, among others, Dorothy Parker, Louise Brooks, Edna Ferber, Lillian Hellman, and Noel Coward - and sold the forgeries to memorabilia and autograph dealers.
After almost two years, Lee fell under suspicion when one or two dealers followed up on their hunches that some of her letters weren't authentic. She became the subject of a trial, but avoided jailtime. She was barred for life from all libraries and research facilities in the United States, and though she cooperated with the Feds to recover the original letters in circulation, there are still many of the 300-plus letters she wrote and forged herself still in circulation. Some of them are potentially still unidentified as fakes.
The movie was released in mid-October in the U.S. and critics have hailed it as "brilliant" and "entertaining."
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Book
Published 2018-09-17 by Simon & Schuster |
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Book
Published 2018-09-17 by Simon & Schuster |