The Formosa Fraud: The Story of George Psalmanazar One of the Greatest Charlatans in Literary History

This title is printed to order. This book may have been self-published. If so, we cannot guarantee the quality of the content. In the main most books will have gone through the editing process however some may not. We therefore suggest that you be aware of this before ordering this book. If in doubt check either the author or publisher’s details as we are unable to accept any returns unless they are faulty. Please contact us if you have any questions.

More than 300 years ago, Taiwan was a controversial topic in London thanks to a stupendous fraud perpetrated by a Frenchman claiming to have been born there.

He made up an entire fantasy for the island with a fake history, a fake language and long list of outrageous claims that made his book, A Description of Formosa, a publishing sensation in London in 1704. Even the Bishop of London swallowed Psalmanazar’s story and invited him to teach his (fake) Formosan language at Oxford University.

The Formosa fantasy world he created, including elephants and camels, gold mines and outlandish religious sacrificial ceremonies, almost rivals Tolkein’s Middle Earth, with the crucial difference that many people believed it to be real.

This is the story of one of the great frauds in literary history.