ABSTRACT
Readers of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries faced mendacity on a routine basis, for colophons were false, authors’ names spurious, titles misleading and prefaces fallacious. However, the real challenge came with those authors who successfully created enough misleading clues to convince large numbers of readers that fiction was fact. Hoaxes posed questions about origins, genre and import in a peculiarly acute form; as such, they can be extremely revealing of the assumptions governing relations between authors and readers. A hoaxer could only be successful in his deception if he managed to identify and exploit readers’ common expectations and behaviour, so if we want to learn more about readers’ habits, hoaxes are an excellent place to begin. With hoaxes, however, deception was only half the story: to be truly successful a sham had eventually to be recognised as such, and this could only happen if sufficient numbers of readers were ultimately able to agree that the account was indeed false, that it was designedly so and that the perpetrator should be applauded for his skill. Hoaxes were therefore sites for debating what constituted the truth and for forging or contesting reputations. A True and Exact Relation of the Strange Finding Out of Moses his Tombe (1657) was the most ambitious hoax of its time. An entertaining combination of traveller’s tale and Jesuit plot-narrative, this pamphlet demonstrates how one particularly adept shammer set about manufacturing credibility and outwitting sceptical readers. Investigating Moses his Tombe and reactions to it proves an education in mid-century news transmission, politics and subversion.
