The Ancestry, Life and Times of Hon. Henry Hastings Sibley [Eugene Field II Forgery]

Minnesota: Pioneer Press Publishing Co., 1889. First edition. Hardcover. Very Good. 23 x 15 cm. Octavo. 596pp. Bound into grey cloth with gilt lettering to spine. There is a 5 x 4 cm paper repair on the title page, not effecting text. Front gutter starting. Poet and collector Eugene Field's name is written on the title page. There is also Mark Twain's "signature" (almost assuredly a forgery) on the front fixed endpaper. Field's son, Eugene Field II, was asounded by how much he could make selling signed books from his late father's library, who passed in 1895. Eventually Eugene II ran out of authentic books and entered into a partnership with forger Harry Dayton Sickles. Together, they forged signatures and used the provenance of Eugene Sr's book collection to sell cheap books with forged signatures to unsuspecting collectors. They are known to have forged signatures of many collectible figures most notably Abraham Lincoln, Frederic Remington, and Mark Twain on not so desirable books. This makes any book purportedly signed that has Field provenance suspect; especially in cases like this one with a flat signature on a book that has nothing to do with Twain. Reference: Rendell, Forging History pg 16, 62-63.