Futility Closet

Denis Vrain-Lucas was an undistinguished forger until he met gullible collector Michel Chasles. Through the 1860s Lucas sold Chasles thousands of phony letters by everyone from Plato to Louis the 14th, earning thousands of francs and touching off a firestorm among confused scholars. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll trace the career of the world's most prolific forger. We'll also count Queen Elizabeth's eggs and puzzle over a destroyed car. Intro: In 2011 Australian architect Horst Kiechle sculpted a human torso from paper. English historian Thomas Birch went angling dressed as a tree. Sources for our feature on Denis Vrain-Lucas: Joseph Rosenblum, Prince of Forgers, 1998. Michael Farquhar, A Treasury of Deception, 2005. John Whitehead, This Solemn Mockery, 1973. James Anson Farrer, Literary Forgeries, 1907. Rebekah Higgitt, "'Newton Dépossédé!' The British Response to the Pascal Forgeries of 1867," British Journal for the History of Science 36:131 (December 2003), 437-453. Stephen