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Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography/Fictitious Entries

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These are entries which have been determined to be fictitious by verifiable sources. Superscripts for each fictitious entry identifies which sources list the name as fictitious. See the list of sources at the bottom of this page.

Fictitious Entries
H V A-G, I-L M-U, W-Z
Sources for names of fictitious entries.
a.  Barnhart, John Hendley. "Some Fictitious Botanists." Journal of the New York Botanical Garden 20 (September 1919): 171-81. (This lists 14, and is at Google Books.)
b.  O'Brien, Frank M. "The Wayward Encyclopedias", New Yorker, XII (May 2, 1936), pp. 71-74. (This is a summary of Barnhart's article.)
c.  Schindler, Margaret Castle. "Fictitious Biography." American Historical Review 42 (1937), pp. 680-90. (This lists 47, including the 14 from Barnhart's article.)
d.  Dobson, John Blythe. "The Spurious Articles in Appleton's Cyclopaedia of American Biography—Some New Discoveries and Considerations." Biography 16(4) 1993: 388-408. (This lists 4 in "I" - Iff, Illiers, Iselin and Issertieux - and Jansen, who had not been detected previously.)
e.  Zorn, George, S.J. Woodstock Letters Index: Volumes 1-80 (1872-1951), Woodstock, Maryland: Woodstock College Press, 1960. Visited 13 October 2011. Search on "phantom Jesuit" or "Appleton's". (This lists 43, including 4 from Schindler's article. It also lists Vergara y Zamoral, who was not detected by Schindler.)
f. Williams, Kelsey Jackson, Appletons' Cyclopeadia And A Mysterious Literary Hoax. (This lists Ingulf von Köln, who had been listed as suspicious by Dobson, and Zénon de Rouvroy, who had not been detected previously).