The Great Rimbaud Forgery

by Bruce Morrissette. Published in 1956. My copy is second-hand and is missing the dusk jacket (if one ever existed). Quite a fascinating volume, subtitled "The Affair of La Chasse spirituelle, With Unpublished Documents and an Anthology of Rimbaldian Pastiches".

For those who don't know the history, La Chasse Spirituelle is a legendary lost Rimbaud masterpiece. Paul Verlaine claimed to have read it and was once in posession of it. It seems his wife may have burned it when the affair between her husband and Rimbaud was uncovered.

This book tells the story of a forgery of that poem, published in May, 1949, in France.

Very interesting and amusing!