Where to Begin?

Here's a very nice list of books about literary forgery and fraud from LibraryThing. You can follow titles along to reviews, if they've been done here, or once you've found an interesting title you can search it on Google and learn more about it. Unfortunately, as you've probably noticed in your studies, many scholarly reviews are locked behind toll booths like JStor, you have to pay to read them. 

Churchill, Dickens, Napoleon

 In the course of other searching I came across several references to a site listing the top selling autographs. What impressed me was that it wasn't all Michael Jackson, Madonna and the celebrity crowd. As the headline indicates, there is still an appreciation of history's truly great, at least as of my visit to the site.

If This Is Friday, We Must Be Marooned

Defoe's "Robinson Crusoe" was long thought to belong in the realm of "imaginary travel," and to some extent that may be so. But, as is now common knowledge, the book was based on the experiences of Scottish mariner Alexander Selkirk. The castaway was rescued by Capt. Woodes Rogers, a very successful privateer. Rogers, a friend of Defoe, mentions Selkirk in his diary. A hundred copies of the diary are thought to survive, including this recent find.

Spotting fake autographs

Though it may not qualify as "literary fraud," the faking of sports autographs certainly has crossover elements. It's epidemic. Here's a good starter "how to" from the BBC: 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/7291412.stm

Just noticed a novel suggestion for those who want to avoid autograph fakery. Collect signed, cashed checks. I can see where there'd be risks but the odds favoring authenticity seem better than with other materials...