Exhibition: Forgers, Fakers, and Publisher-Pirates
Forgers, Fakers, and Publisher-Pirates
3 September 2025 through 31 March 2026
Whether print or digital, text or image, artistic or scientific, rare or common, historic or contemporary, most of the content we encounter contains accidental mistakes–ranging from typos to factual errors to errors arising from prejudicial assumptions–and a significant proportion of it also contains deliberate misinformation resulting from various forms of forgery, fakery, and piracy. We can all become better readers and better at protecting ourselves from scammers by improving our understanding of the nature of the content before us. This exhibition introduces the work of notorious and lesser-known forgers, it reveals the various ways in which experts and authors have faked their own identities over the centuries–ranging from carefully-selected pseudonyms to falsified ethnicities to fraudulent credentials–and it explores a number of shady publishing practices. We may find ourselves laughing out loud at the wide variety of weird and wacky enterprises, many of which have been reinvented for each successive generation and every new technology over the centuries.
Check out this free exhibition at Bruce Peel Special Collections (basement of Rutherford South), which is open for drop-in visitors on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday afternoons (1-4pm). Monday afternoons are set aside for group exhibition visits, which can be requested by writing to us at bpsc@ualberta.ca. Detailed information about the Peel library's hours can be found on the Library location page.
The book/catalogue that accompanies this exhibition can be purchased in person in the Peel library for $40 (cash only, no dealers) or through University of Alberta Press or Indigo.
Many of the rare books shown in this exhibition can be viewed digitally (for free) thanks to our colleagues at University of Alberta Library and at other libraries around the world. You will find links to digitized books in our digital resource for the exhibition.
Peel's hours and services
HOURS & SERVICES AT BRUCE PEEL SPECIAL COLLECTIONS
EXHIBITION HOURS (September through March)
Mondays 1-4pm: Reserved for prearranged group visitsTuesdays: Closed
Wednesdays-Fridays 1-4pm: Open for drop-in visits
RESEARCH HOURS (September through March)
Mondays: No research appointments
Tuesdays 1-4pm: Reserved for quiet research, by appointment
Wednesdays-Fridays 1-4pm: By appointment
Mondays: No research appointments
Tuesdays 1-4pm: Reserved for quiet research, by appointment
Wednesdays-Fridays 1-4pm: By appointment
Questions? Please write to us at bpsc@ualberta.ca
Note: Peel is closed on statutory holidays and on Thursday, September 25th for an event.
To view rare materials held in Bruce Peel Special Collections, please write to us at bpsc@ualberta.ca to request a research appointment well in advance, listing the requested materials including author, title, and call number for each item, and offering some date options. We book research appointments during the regular academic year, September-March, on a first-come, first-served basis, so there may be a delay, but we will do our best to be accommodating. Standard reading room policies and protocols, designed to protect rare materials, are in force.
Remote Research Services: The Peel team serves researchers' needs remotely by answering questions about rare materials, providing researchers with images of materials not otherwise available (whenever possible), and providing links to digital resources that may help to meet current research and teaching needs (see "Peel materials online"). If you have questions that relate to materials housed in Bruce Peel Special Collections, you can send us an email at bpsc@ualberta.ca.
Visiting Researchers: If you are planning to travel to the Edmonton area to carry out research at Bruce Peel Special Collections, we strongly recommend that you do so during the regular academic year to avoid our limited summer service period. Regardless of when you plan to visit, it is important to contact us at bpsc@ualberta.ca well in advance so that we have every opportunity to accommodate your needs.
Like other locations of the University of Alberta Library, Bruce Peel Special Collections is open to all researchers, including faculty, staff, students, and members of the general public.
Peel materials online
Bruce Peel Special Collections offers a limited number of research appointments each week (September-March), but some researchers will want to consider using digital resources where possible, and professors who are planning classes are encouraged to make use of rare materials that can be examined either as print originals or using digital reproductions, so that all options are available to your students.
In order to help you to identify digital reproductions of primary source materials, we continue to work to add relevant links to the Research Collections page on Peel's website. Such links will help you to find digital content that has been created by U of A Library, by our colleagues at other institutions, and through collaborative projects. Also, please note that University of Alberta Library subscribes to numerous online databases, including many that offer digitized primary source materials.
Here are some highlights of Peel's digital resources:
Peel's Digital Exhibitions - Expertly curated and filled with images of rare materials, Peel's award-winning digital exhibition program covers topics from the history of photography (Photographies) to Canadian Women Artists' Books to the source of some of the earliest ideas about witches and witch trials (Tinctor's Foul Treatise). They explore the papers (including photographs) of pioneering Western Canadian journalist Miriam Green Ellis, the complexities of interpreting primary historical materials (Sam Steele's Forty Years in Canada: History or Fiction?), and some of the most frequently-requested rare books in Bruce Peel Special Collections (Honorary Degree Books). The newest additions explore 700 years of fish on the page (The Ones That Didn't Get Away: Reflections on Fish Books and Book Collecting) and offer open access to digitized versions of the rare books on display during a major exhibition: Forgers, Fakers, and Publisher-Pirates (The Digitized Books), digitized by U of A Library or by our colleagues at other institutions.
Digitized in Subscription Databases - Some of Peel's collections have been partially digitized through databases created by major publishers and available only through subscribing libraries (including U of A Library), such as the Gregory Javitch Collection of books about Indigenous peoples and the Dr Ronald B. Madge Entomology Collection.
Digitized through Internet Archive - A selection of Peel materials have been digitized through the Internet Archive (which is free and available to all), including Treaty parchments (for Treaties 4, 6, 7, & 8), the Tinctor manuscipt, a Medieval Book of Hours, a collection of English Playbills (1779-1949), the Indigenous Photograph Collection, the Prairie Postcard Collection, and the Ariel Bension Sephardic Manuscript Collection, in addition to selections from the Gregory Javitch Collection of books about Indigenous peoples and the Dr Ronald B. Madge Entomology Collection.
Good luck with your research!
Where do ideas about witchcraft come from?
Explore early ideas about witchcraft by learning about a very rare (and sinister) fifteenth-century manuscript housed in University of Alberta's Bruce Peel Special Collections.
Tinctor's Foul Treatise is an award-winning digital exhibition that unlocks the secrets of this special manuscript. The exhibition was mounted in October 2016 by University of Alberta's Bruce Peel Special Collections, and it is the winner of the prestigious 2018 Leab Award (Electronic Exhibitions) from the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) and the Rare Books and Manuscripts Section (RBMS) of the American Library Association.
The Arras Witch Treatises is a full English-language translation of two important fifteenth-century source texts (Tinctor's Invectives and the anonymous Recollectio) prepared by the curators of Tinctor's Foul Treatise and published by Pennsylvania State University Press (2016) as part of their Magic in History series. This edition is available through University of Alberta Library (BF 1582 A155 2016) and is widely available for sale.
Get a close digital look—through Internet Archive—at the copy of Tinctor's Invectives housed in University of Alberta's Bruce Peel Special Collections.
You can still check out Tinctor's Foul Manual online, a one-hour documentary produced by Paul Kennedy for the CBC's Ideas that has been aired numerous times, most recently on 2 August 2016.
Read "The Travels of a Fifteenth-Century Demonological Manuscript: The University of Alberta's Copy of Jean Taincture's Invectives contre la secte de vaudrie," by Robert Desjardins, Francois Pageau, and Andrew Gow. Florilgelium 33 (26 Aug 2019).
Check out Paula Simons' fascinating exploration of the ways that old ideas about witchcraft continue to haunt us today: "Politics, Powerful Women and Hunting Witches in a New Age of Superstition," Edmonton Journal (29 Oct 2016). This story helpfully links to a relevant story by Simons: "Witch History takes flight in Rare Manuscript at U of A," Edmonton Journal (27 Oct 2012), and a related blog post "The Witch-Burner's Mein Kampf: Excerpts of Evil" (Oct 2012).
Or read this recent article, one of many, that asks if justice is now possible for those wrongly tortured and executed: "300 Years On, Will Thousands of Women Burned as Witches Finally Get Justice?" The Guardian (13 Sept 2020).
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