Cooper Irving S

Clifford Irving (1930–2017) was an American novelist and investigative reporter. While he authored numerous novels, his most notable achievement was the creation of a fake autobiography attributed to the reclusive billionaire Howard Hughes. This ambitious hoax, intended for publication in 1972, unraveled when Hughes himself publicly denounced it, leading to legal action against the publisher and Irving's confession.

Following the exposure of the fraud, Irving was sentenced to prison, serving 17 months of a two-and-a-half-year term. He later detailed the events surrounding the fake autobiography in his own book, "The Hoax" (1981), which was subsequently adapted into a film. Irving continued to write throughout his life, including his prison experiences, and his literary papers were later archived.

Born in New York City to a father who was a Collier's cover artist and a comic strip creator, Clifford Irving grew up in a Jewish household. After graduating from the High School of Music and Art, he attended Cornell University, where he earned honors in English. His early career included a stint as a copy boy at The New York Times. Irving's first novel, "On a Darkling Plain," was published in 1956. He followed this with "The Losers" (1958) and "The Valley" (1960), a mythic Western saga. During his time in Ibiza, he befriended artist Elmyr de Hory, for whom he wrote a biography titled "Fake!" (1969). Both Irving and de Hory were later featured in Orson Welles's documentary "F for Fake."

In 1970, Irving and his friend Richard Suskind devised a plan to write the supposed autobiography of the reclusive Howard Hughes. They believed Hughes's withdrawal from public life would prevent him from disputing the work. Irving's strategy involved forging letters in Hughes's style, which he presented to his publisher, McGraw-Hill, claiming Hughes had personally approached him. The publisher, eager for the sensational project, provided a substantial advance, with payments allegedly routed to a Swiss bank account under a forged name. The deception was revealed in January 1972 when Hughes, via a televised conference call, denied ever meeting or corresponding with Irving. This led to lawsuits, investigations into the bank accounts, and the Irvings' eventual confession.

After serving his prison sentence, Irving continued his writing career. He published "The Hoax" in 1981, recounting the infamous autobiography affair, which later inspired a biographical film. He also published his prison journal. In his later years, Irving made his backlist of books available digitally. He passed away in 2017 at the age of 87. His extensive literary and personal papers, spanning over five decades, were acquired by the Briscoe Center for American History, preserving his correspondence, diaries, manuscripts, and legal documents for future scholarly research.