Memoirs of the viceroy Li Hung Chang With an introduction by Hon. John W. Foster

Memoirs of the viceroy Li Hung Chang With an introduction by Hon. John W. Foster

Author: [Mannix, William F. (William (Francis)] ; Foster, John W. (John Watson) (ed.)

Year: 1912

8vo. pp. xxvii, 314, f. [1] (plates). Includes frontispiece portrait. “For our dear Bob, with best love, from us both, F.H. & B.A. Needham … 1916” inscribed on front pastedown endpaper. First edition of this spurious biography by the hoaxer, journalist, criminal, and literary forger William Francis Mannix (d. 1920), who claimed to have based his work on manuscripts written by the Chinese politician, diplomat and general Li Hung Chang (1823-1901). Mannix wrote the work while being imprisoned for fraud and had installments published in the New York Sun and the London Observer in 1912 before he turned it into the current form. At the request of Houghton Mifflin, the American company that published the work in the same year (see Bib# 907704/Fr# 1538), the American diplomat and journalist John Foster reviewed the work and even wrote an introduction for it, vouching for its authenticity. See M. K. Duhon, Journalist and Hoaxer: William Francis Mannix and the Long History of Faked News. Baton Rouge, Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, Master thesis, 2017.