The Century of Deception

In ‘The Century of Deception’, Ian Keable tells the engrossing stories of eighteenth-century hoaxes, and those who were duped by them. The English public were hoodwinked time and time again, swallowing whole tales of a woman who gave birth to rabbits, a levitating Frenchman in a Chinese Temple and outrageous astrological predictions. Not only were the hoaxes widely influential, drawing in celebrities such as Samuel Johnson, Benjamin Franklin and Jonathan Swift, but they also inflamed concerns about ‘English credulity’. ‘Fake news’ and ‘going viral’ may be modern terms, but as this eye-opening book shows, these concepts have been with us for centuries.