Welcome to Litsy!

This is the true story of a brilliantly forged Emily Dickinson poem sold at Sotheby's in 1997. The author's detective work led him across America, to a prison cell in Salt Lake City, where the world's greatest literary forger, Mark Hofmann, is serving a life sentence for double-murder. Mark Hofmann is no ordinary murderer. Until he was incarcerated he was the world's greatest literary forger: a man who combined meticulous historical research with craftsmanship and forensic science. In 1997, one of his most accomplished forgeries, a poem by the much-loved 19th-century poet Emily Dickinson, turned up at a Sotheby's and was sold for $21,000 to the library in Dickinson's home town, Amherst.