Fine Books & Manuscripts

[ABRAHAM LINCOLN FORGERY]. Eugene Field II forged Abraham Lincoln signature (“A. Lincoln”) penned on the inside cover of: THACKERY, William Makepeace. Vanity Fair. London: Bradbury and Evans, 1848. 8vo. Engraved frontispiece, title, and 38 plates, wood–engraved illustrations (offsetting from plates to text, marginal browning to plates). Original blind–stamped cloth, gilt–lettered spine (old rebacking, hinges broken, text block separated from spine, first and last quires sprung, lacking terminal blanks). FIRST EDITION IN BOOK FORM, later issue. Provenance: Eugene Field (the author’s ownership signature on front free endpaper, possibly forged by his son); inscription on rear pastedown by Eugene Field II claiming that this book came from his father’s library and that the “manuscript autograph signature of A. Lincoln was inspected(?) to my father by Clark Hauser(?) of Cleveland, the newspaper publisher and national politician(?)”, signed by Field II and dated November 9, 1931. FROM A KNOWN LINCOLN FORGER. Between the 1920s and 30s, Eugene Field II was known to have forged Lincoln’s signature in many books that had been previously owned by his grandfather which the American author, Eugene Field Sr. (1850–1895), had left to his son. Eugene Field II profited greatly from the forgeries and later partnered with another known counterfeiter named Harry D. Sickles. It is believed that the two men went on to falsify more than one hundred Lincoln documents as well as signatures of numerous other famous figures including Mark Twain, Rudyard Kipling and Theodore Roosevelt.