This is a tale of what might have taken place. It is fiction, though it is shot through with many historical facts. I came across a real story in a real photograph which forms the frontispiece of this book; or rather two real stories that interwove into a tale worth telling, and in both stories most of the people were real. They lived, they breathed, they walked under the sun and saw out their lives as we all do. But beyond that I have put words into their mouths, ascribed actions to them that they probably never took and made them interact in ways they may never have done. On the other hand, they may have done all of these things and the fact is that no-one alive today knows whether they did or not; their lives are mostly a blank sheet. So in telling their story I set them as far as I could into the world of their day and made the detail of their everyday lives real, though I have tried to treat them with respect. If my characters go to a shop, then be assured, that shop existed. In the visiting of a theatre, that also existed; the playbill is composed of acts of the time. If they catch a train at a station, though closed for 100 years, that station was there; many of the small details in my book may be searched for and found in books and on the internet should anyone care to do so. Not all of my characters are real, for it was necessary to invent some for story purposes. Nonetheless, they are of their time also; I have tried to make it so that my audience can enter into the age in which this story is set, even in minutiae, and in some way, though through a glass darkly, to see the world as it was then. It is my hope that the reader enjoys the result.

John Payne Collier (1789–1883), one of the most controversial figures in the history of literary scholarship, pursued a double career. A prolific and highly influential writer on the drama, poetry, and popular prose of Shakespeare's age, Collier was at the same time the promulgator of a great body of forgeries and false evidence, seriously affecting the text and biography of Shakespeare and many others. This monumental two-volume work for the first time addresses the whole of Collier's activity, systematically sorting out his genuine achievements from his impostures. Arthur and Janet Freeman reassess the scholar-forger's long life, milieu, and relations with a large circle of associates and rivals while presenting a chronological bibliography of his extensive publications, all fully annotated with regard to their creditability. The authors also survey the broader history of literary forgery in Great Britain and consider why so talented a man not only yielded to its temptations but also persisted in it throughout his life.