can you ever forgive me memoirs of a literary forger

Between 19, she wrote more than three hundred letters in the voices of, among others, Dorothy Parker, Louise Brooks, Edna Ferber, Lillian Hellman, and Noel Coward-and sold the forgeries to memorabilia and autograph dealers. Her first book on Tallulah Bankhead was a New York Times bestseller, and her second, on the late journalist and reporter Dorothy Kilgallen, made a splash in the headlines.īut by 1990, almost broke and desperate to hang onto her Upper West Side studio, Lee made a bold and irreversible career change: inspired by a letter she'd received once from Katharine Hepburn, and armed with her considerable skills as a researcher and celebrity biographer, she began to forge letters in the voices of literary greats. Between 19, she wrote more than three hundred letters in the voices of, among others, Dorothy Parker, Louise Brooks, Edna Ferber, Lillian Hellman, and Noel Coward-and sold the forgeries to memorabilia and autograph dealers.Now a major motion picture starring Melissa McCarthy-Lee Israel's hilarious and shocking memoir of the astonishing caper she carried on for almost two years when she forged and sold more than three hundred letters by such literary notables as Dorothy Parker, Edna Ferber, Noel Coward, and many others.īefore turning to her life of crime-running a one-woman forgery business out of a phone booth in a Greenwich Village bar and even dodging the FBI-Lee Israel had a legitimate career as an author of biographies. Now a major motion picture starring Melissa McCarthy-Lee Israel's hilarious and shocking memoir of the astonishing caper she carried on for almost two years when she forged and sold more than three hundred letters by such literary notables as Dorothy Parker, Edna Ferber, Noel Coward, and many others.īefore turning to her life of crime-running a one-woman forgery business out of a phone booth in a Greenwich Village bar and even dodging the FBI-Lee Israel had a legitimate career as an author of biographies.

Can you ever forgive me memoirs of a literary forger