HOAX: TRUTH AND LIES IN THE AGE OF ENLIGHTENMENT (HB)

The discoveries of the Enlightenment unsettled as much as they excited. New truths challenged longstanding beliefs. Rationalism jarred with superstition. From the chaos, three women and their hoaxes rose as symbols of terror and fascination. But were the lies surrounding Fanny Lynes, Mary Bateman and Mary Willcocks entirely of their own making? Why were the public transfixed? Questioning culpability and complicity, Pelling's engrossing history of this great age of the hoax reveals a veiled world of moral panic, tall tales and true crime, and holds a mirror to our own turbulent relationship with truth.