George Psalmanazar
Encyclopedia
George Psalmanazar claimed to be the first Formosan
to visit Europe
. For some years he convinced many in Britain
, but was later revealed to be an impostor
. He later became a theological essay
ist and a friend and acquaintance of Samuel Johnson
and other noted figures of 18th-century literary London.
, perhaps in Languedoc
or Provence
, to Catholic
parents sometime between 1679 and 1684. His birth name is unknown. According to his posthumously published autobiography, he was educated in a Franciscan school and then a Jesuit academy. In both of these institutions, he claimed to have been celebrated by his teachers for what he called "my uncommon genius for languages." Indeed, by his own account Psalmanazar was something of a child prodigy, since he notes that he attained fluency in Latin by the age of seven or eight, and excelled in competition with children twice his age. Later encounters with a sophistic philosophy tutor made him disenchanted with academicism, however, and Psalmanazar discontinued his education
around the time he was fifteen or sixteen.
pilgrim
on his way to Rome
. After learning English, forging a passport
and stealing a pilgrim's cloak and staff from the reliquary of a local church, he set off, but soon found that his disguise was hindered by the fact that many people he met were familiar with Ireland and were able to discern that he was a fraud.
Deciding that a more exotic disguise was needed, Psalmanazar drew upon the missionary reports of the Far East
he had heard from his Jesuit tutors and decided to impersonate a Japanese convert
. At some point he further embellished this new persona by becoming a "Japanese heathen" and exhibiting an array of appropriately bizarre customs such as eating raw meat spiced with cardamom
and sleeping while sitting upright in a chair.
Having failed to reach Rome
, Psalmanazar traveled through the German principalities
between 1700 and 1702, and appeared in the Netherlands
around the year 1702, where he served as an occasional mercenary and soldier. By this time he had shifted his supposed homeland from Japan to the even more remote island of Formosa
(present day Taiwan
), and developed more elaborate customs, such as following a foreign calendar
, worshipping the Sun and the Moon with complex propitiatory rites of his own invention, and even speaking an invented language.
In late 1702 Psalmanazar met the Scottish priest William Innes, who was a chaplain of a Scottish army unit. Afterwards, Innes claimed that he had converted the heathen to Christianity
and christened him George Psalmanazar (in reference to biblical Assyrian king Shalmaneser
). In 1703 they left for London
via Rotterdam
to meet with the Anglican clergy in England.
and taken to France
, where he had steadfastly refused to become Roman Catholic. Psalmanazar soon declared himself to be a reformed heathen who now practiced Anglicanism
, and became a favorite of the Bishop of London
and other esteemed members of London society.
Building upon this growing interest in his life, in 1704 Psalmanazar published a book entitled An Historical and Geographical Description of Formosa, an Island subject to the Emperor of Japan which purported to be a detailed description of Formosan customs, geography and political economy, but which was in fact a complete invention on Psalmanazar's part. The "facts" contained in the book were in fact an amalgam of other travel reports, and were especially influenced by accounts of the Aztec
and Inca civilization in the New World
and by embellished descriptions of Japan
. Thomas More
's Utopia
may also have served as an inspiration. According to Psalmanazar, Formosa was a prosperous country with a capital city called Xternetsa. Men walked naked except for a gold or silver plate to cover their genitals. Their main food was a serpent that they hunted with branches. Formosans were polygamous
and husbands had a right to eat their wives for infidelity. They executed murderers by hanging them upside down and shooting them full of arrows. Annually they sacrificed the hearts of 18,000 young boys to gods and priests ate the bodies
. They used horse
s and camel
s for mass transportation and dwelled underground in circular houses.
. His efforts in this regard were so convincing that German grammarians were including samples of his so-called "Formosan alphabet" in books of languages well into the 18th century, even after his larger imposture had been exposed. Here is an example of one of his religious translations from 1703, the Lord's Prayer
:
Psalmanazar's book was an unqualified success. It went through two English
editions, and French
and German
editions followed. After its publication, Psalmanazar was invited to lecture upon Formosan culture and language before several learned societies, and it was even proposed that he be summoned to lecture at Oxford University. In the most famous of these lecture engagements, Psalmanazar spoke before the Royal Society
, where he was challenged by Edmond Halley
.
Psalmanazar was frequently challenged by skeptics in this period, but for the most part he managed to deflect criticism of his core claims. He explained, for instance, that his pale skin was due to the fact that the upper classes of Formosa lived underground. Jesuits who had actually worked as missionaries
in Formosa were not believed due to British anti-Jesuit prejudice.
as chaplain-general to the English forces. In the interim, Psalmanazar developed an opium addiction and became involved in several misguided business ventures, including a failed effort to market decorated fans purported to be from Formosa. Psalmanazar's claims became increasingly less credible as time went on and knowledge of Formosa from other sources began to contradict his own claims. His energetic defense of his imposture began to slacken. In 1706 he confessed, first to friends and then to the general public, although by this time London society had largely grown tired of the "Formosan craze".
In the following years Psalmanazar worked for a time as a clerk in an army regiment until some clergymen gave him money to study theology. Following this period, Psalmanazar participated — in a humble fashion — in London's Grub Street
literary milieu of book editing and pamphlet writing. He learned Hebrew
, co-authored Samuel Palmer
's A General History of Printing (1732), and contributed a number of articles to the Universal History. He even contributed to the book A Complete System of Geography and wrote about the real conditions in Formosa, pointedly criticising the hoax he had earlier perpetrated. In this period he appears to have become increasingly religious and disowned his youthful impostures. This new-found religiosity culminated in his anonymous publication of a book of theological essays in 1753.
Psalmanazar also interacted with a number of other important English literary figures of his age. In the early months of 1741, Psalmanazar appears to have sent the novelist Samuel Richardson
an unsolicited bundle of forty handwritten pages which attempted to continue the plotline of Richardson’s immensely popular epistolary novel Pamela
. The novelist appears to have been unimpressed, calling Psalmanazar's attempted sequel “ridiculous and improbable”. In "A Modest Proposal
", Jonathan Swift
ridicules Psalmanazar in passing, sardonically citing “the famous Salamanaazor, a Native of the island of Formosa, who came from thence to London, above twenty Years ago,” as an eminent proponent of cannibalism. Finally, a novel by Tobias Smollett refers mockingly to “Psalmanazar, who, after having drudged half a century in the literary mill in all the simplicity and abstinence of an Asiatic, subsists on the charity of a few booksellers, just sufficient to keep him from the parish”.
In the last years of his life, Psalmanazar wrote the book upon which much of contemporary knowledge of him rests: Memoirs of ** ** , Commonly Known by the Name of George Psalmanazar; a Reputed Native of Formosa. The book was published posthumously. These memoirs omit his real birth name, which is still unknown, but they contain a wealth of detail about his early life and the development of his impostures.
Taiwan
Taiwan , also known, especially in the past, as Formosa , is the largest island of the same-named island group of East Asia in the western Pacific Ocean and located off the southeastern coast of mainland China. The island forms over 99% of the current territory of the Republic of China following...
to visit Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
. For some years he convinced many in Britain
Kingdom of Great Britain
The former Kingdom of Great Britain, sometimes described as the 'United Kingdom of Great Britain', That the Two Kingdoms of Scotland and England, shall upon the 1st May next ensuing the date hereof, and forever after, be United into One Kingdom by the Name of GREAT BRITAIN. was a sovereign...
, but was later revealed to be an impostor
Impostor
An impostor or imposter is a person who pretends to be somebody else, often to try to gain financial or social advantages through social engineering, but just as often for purposes of espionage or law enforcement....
. He later became a theological essay
Essay
An essay is a piece of writing which is often written from an author's personal point of view. Essays can consist of a number of elements, including: literary criticism, political manifestos, learned arguments, observations of daily life, recollections, and reflections of the author. The definition...
ist and a friend and acquaintance of Samuel Johnson
Samuel Johnson
Samuel Johnson , often referred to as Dr. Johnson, was an English author who made lasting contributions to English literature as a poet, essayist, moralist, literary critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer...
and other noted figures of 18th-century literary London.
Early life
Although Psalmanazar intentionally obscured many details of his early life, he is believed to have been born in southern FranceFrance
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
, perhaps in Languedoc
Languedoc
Languedoc is a former province of France, now continued in the modern-day régions of Languedoc-Roussillon and Midi-Pyrénées in the south of France, and whose capital city was Toulouse, now in Midi-Pyrénées. It had an area of approximately 42,700 km² .-Geographical Extent:The traditional...
or Provence
Provence
Provence ; Provençal: Provença in classical norm or Prouvènço in Mistralian norm) is a region of south eastern France on the Mediterranean adjacent to Italy. It is part of the administrative région of Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur...
, to Catholic
Catholicism
Catholicism is a broad term for the body of the Catholic faith, its theologies and doctrines, its liturgical, ethical, spiritual, and behavioral characteristics, as well as a religious people as a whole....
parents sometime between 1679 and 1684. His birth name is unknown. According to his posthumously published autobiography, he was educated in a Franciscan school and then a Jesuit academy. In both of these institutions, he claimed to have been celebrated by his teachers for what he called "my uncommon genius for languages." Indeed, by his own account Psalmanazar was something of a child prodigy, since he notes that he attained fluency in Latin by the age of seven or eight, and excelled in competition with children twice his age. Later encounters with a sophistic philosophy tutor made him disenchanted with academicism, however, and Psalmanazar discontinued his education
Education
Education in its broadest, general sense is the means through which the aims and habits of a group of people lives on from one generation to the next. Generally, it occurs through any experience that has a formative effect on the way one thinks, feels, or acts...
around the time he was fifteen or sixteen.
Continental Europe
In order to gain safe and affordable travel in France, Psalmanazar decided to pretend to be an IrishIreland
Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...
pilgrim
Pilgrim
A pilgrim is a traveler who is on a journey to a holy place. Typically, this is a physical journeying to some place of special significance to the adherent of a particular religious belief system...
on his way to Rome
Rome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...
. After learning English, forging a passport
Passport
A passport is a document, issued by a national government, which certifies, for the purpose of international travel, the identity and nationality of its holder. The elements of identity are name, date of birth, sex, and place of birth....
and stealing a pilgrim's cloak and staff from the reliquary of a local church, he set off, but soon found that his disguise was hindered by the fact that many people he met were familiar with Ireland and were able to discern that he was a fraud.
Deciding that a more exotic disguise was needed, Psalmanazar drew upon the missionary reports of the Far East
Far East
The Far East is an English term mostly describing East Asia and Southeast Asia, with South Asia sometimes also included for economic and cultural reasons.The term came into use in European geopolitical discourse in the 19th century,...
he had heard from his Jesuit tutors and decided to impersonate a Japanese convert
Christianity in Japan
Christianity is a minority religion in Japan, with less than one percent claiming Christian belief or affiliation. Nearly all known traditional denominations of Christianity, including Roman Catholicism, Protestantism and Orthodox Christianity are represented in Japan today.The root of the Japanese...
. At some point he further embellished this new persona by becoming a "Japanese heathen" and exhibiting an array of appropriately bizarre customs such as eating raw meat spiced with cardamom
Cardamom
Cardamom refers to several plants of the genera Elettaria and Amomum in the ginger family Zingiberaceae. Both genera are native to India and Bhutan; they are recognised by their small seed pod, triangular in cross-section and spindle-shaped, with a thin papery outer shell and small black seeds...
and sleeping while sitting upright in a chair.
Having failed to reach Rome
Rome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...
, Psalmanazar traveled through the German principalities
Holy Roman Empire
The Holy Roman Empire was a realm that existed from 962 to 1806 in Central Europe.It was ruled by the Holy Roman Emperor. Its character changed during the Middle Ages and the Early Modern period, when the power of the emperor gradually weakened in favour of the princes...
between 1700 and 1702, and appeared in the Netherlands
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
around the year 1702, where he served as an occasional mercenary and soldier. By this time he had shifted his supposed homeland from Japan to the even more remote island of Formosa
Formosa
Formosa or Ilha Formosa is a Portuguese historical name for Taiwan , literally meaning, "Beautiful Island". The term may also refer to:-Places:* Formosa Strait, another name for the Taiwan Strait...
(present day Taiwan
Taiwan
Taiwan , also known, especially in the past, as Formosa , is the largest island of the same-named island group of East Asia in the western Pacific Ocean and located off the southeastern coast of mainland China. The island forms over 99% of the current territory of the Republic of China following...
), and developed more elaborate customs, such as following a foreign calendar
Calendar
A calendar is a system of organizing days for social, religious, commercial, or administrative purposes. This is done by giving names to periods of time, typically days, weeks, months, and years. The name given to each day is known as a date. Periods in a calendar are usually, though not...
, worshipping the Sun and the Moon with complex propitiatory rites of his own invention, and even speaking an invented language.
In late 1702 Psalmanazar met the Scottish priest William Innes, who was a chaplain of a Scottish army unit. Afterwards, Innes claimed that he had converted the heathen to Christianity
Christianity
Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus as presented in canonical gospels and other New Testament writings...
and christened him George Psalmanazar (in reference to biblical Assyrian king Shalmaneser
Shalmaneser
Shalmaneser is the name of several Assyrian kings:*Shalmaneser I *Shalmaneser II, King of Assyria from 1031 BC to 1019 BC*Shalmaneser III, king of Assyria *Shalmaneser IV, king of Assyria...
). In 1703 they left for London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
via Rotterdam
Rotterdam
Rotterdam is the second-largest city in the Netherlands and one of the largest ports in the world. Starting as a dam on the Rotte river, Rotterdam has grown into a major international commercial centre...
to meet with the Anglican clergy in England.
England
Upon reaching London, news of the exotic foreigner with bizarre habits spread quickly and Psalmanazar began to achieve a high level of fame. Crucially, Psalmanazar's appeal derived not only from his exotic ways, which tapped into a growing domestic interest in travel narratives describing faraway locales, but also played upon the prevailing anti-Catholic and anti-Jesuit religious sentiment of early 18th century Britain. Central to his narrative was his claim to have been abducted from Formosa by malevolent JesuitsSociety of Jesus
The Society of Jesus is a Catholic male religious order that follows the teachings of the Catholic Church. The members are called Jesuits, and are also known colloquially as "God's Army" and as "The Company," these being references to founder Ignatius of Loyola's military background and a...
and taken to France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
, where he had steadfastly refused to become Roman Catholic. Psalmanazar soon declared himself to be a reformed heathen who now practiced Anglicanism
Anglicanism
Anglicanism is a tradition within Christianity comprising churches with historical connections to the Church of England or similar beliefs, worship and church structures. The word Anglican originates in ecclesia anglicana, a medieval Latin phrase dating to at least 1246 that means the English...
, and became a favorite of the Bishop of London
Bishop of London
The Bishop of London is the ordinary of the Church of England Diocese of London in the Province of Canterbury.The diocese covers 458 km² of 17 boroughs of Greater London north of the River Thames and a small part of the County of Surrey...
and other esteemed members of London society.
Building upon this growing interest in his life, in 1704 Psalmanazar published a book entitled An Historical and Geographical Description of Formosa, an Island subject to the Emperor of Japan which purported to be a detailed description of Formosan customs, geography and political economy, but which was in fact a complete invention on Psalmanazar's part. The "facts" contained in the book were in fact an amalgam of other travel reports, and were especially influenced by accounts of the Aztec
Aztec
The Aztec people were certain ethnic groups of central Mexico, particularly those groups who spoke the Nahuatl language and who dominated large parts of Mesoamerica in the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries, a period referred to as the late post-classic period in Mesoamerican chronology.Aztec is the...
and Inca civilization in the New World
New World
The New World is one of the names used for the Western Hemisphere, specifically America and sometimes Oceania . The term originated in the late 15th century, when America had been recently discovered by European explorers, expanding the geographical horizon of the people of the European middle...
and by embellished descriptions of Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
. Thomas More
Thomas More
Sir Thomas More , also known by Catholics as Saint Thomas More, was an English lawyer, social philosopher, author, statesman and noted Renaissance humanist. He was an important councillor to Henry VIII of England and, for three years toward the end of his life, Lord Chancellor...
's Utopia
Utopia
Utopia is an ideal community or society possessing a perfect socio-politico-legal system. The word was imported from Greek by Sir Thomas More for his 1516 book Utopia, describing a fictional island in the Atlantic Ocean. The term has been used to describe both intentional communities that attempt...
may also have served as an inspiration. According to Psalmanazar, Formosa was a prosperous country with a capital city called Xternetsa. Men walked naked except for a gold or silver plate to cover their genitals. Their main food was a serpent that they hunted with branches. Formosans were polygamous
Polygamy
Polygamy is a marriage which includes more than two partners...
and husbands had a right to eat their wives for infidelity. They executed murderers by hanging them upside down and shooting them full of arrows. Annually they sacrificed the hearts of 18,000 young boys to gods and priests ate the bodies
Cannibalism
Cannibalism is the act or practice of humans eating the flesh of other human beings. It is also called anthropophagy...
. They used horse
Horse
The horse is one of two extant subspecies of Equus ferus, or the wild horse. It is a single-hooved mammal belonging to the taxonomic family Equidae. The horse has evolved over the past 45 to 55 million years from a small multi-toed creature into the large, single-toed animal of today...
s and camel
Camel
A camel is an even-toed ungulate within the genus Camelus, bearing distinctive fatty deposits known as humps on its back. There are two species of camels: the dromedary or Arabian camel has a single hump, and the bactrian has two humps. Dromedaries are native to the dry desert areas of West Asia,...
s for mass transportation and dwelled underground in circular houses.
Pseudo-lexicographer
Psalmanazar's book also described the Formosan language and alphabet, which is significant for being an early example of a constructed languageConstructed language
A planned or constructed language—known colloquially as a conlang—is a language whose phonology, grammar, and/or vocabulary has been consciously devised by an individual or group, instead of having evolved naturally...
. His efforts in this regard were so convincing that German grammarians were including samples of his so-called "Formosan alphabet" in books of languages well into the 18th century, even after his larger imposture had been exposed. Here is an example of one of his religious translations from 1703, the Lord's Prayer
Lord's Prayer
The Lord's Prayer is a central prayer in Christianity. In the New Testament of the Christian Bible, it appears in two forms: in the Gospel of Matthew as part of the discourse on ostentation in the Sermon on the Mount, and in the Gospel of Luke, which records Jesus being approached by "one of his...
:
Amy Pornio dan chin Ornio vicy, Gnayjorhe
sai Lory, Eyfodere sai Bagalin, jorhe sai domion
apo chin Ornio, kay chin Badi eyen, Amy khatsada
nadakchion toye ant nadayi, kay Radonaye ant
amy Sochin, apo ant radonern amy Sochiakhin,
bagne ant kau chin malaboski, ali abinaye ant tuen
Broskacy, kens sai vie Bagalin, kay Fary, kay
Barhaniaan chinania sendabey. Amien.
Psalmanazar's book was an unqualified success. It went through two English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
editions, and French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
and German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
editions followed. After its publication, Psalmanazar was invited to lecture upon Formosan culture and language before several learned societies, and it was even proposed that he be summoned to lecture at Oxford University. In the most famous of these lecture engagements, Psalmanazar spoke before the Royal Society
Royal Society
The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, known simply as the Royal Society, is a learned society for science, and is possibly the oldest such society in existence. Founded in November 1660, it was granted a Royal Charter by King Charles II as the "Royal Society of London"...
, where he was challenged by Edmond Halley
Edmond Halley
Edmond Halley FRS was an English astronomer, geophysicist, mathematician, meteorologist, and physicist who is best known for computing the orbit of the eponymous Halley's Comet. He was the second Astronomer Royal in Britain, following in the footsteps of John Flamsteed.-Biography and career:Halley...
.
Psalmanazar was frequently challenged by skeptics in this period, but for the most part he managed to deflect criticism of his core claims. He explained, for instance, that his pale skin was due to the fact that the upper classes of Formosa lived underground. Jesuits who had actually worked as missionaries
Missionary
A missionary is a member of a religious group sent into an area to do evangelism or ministries of service, such as education, literacy, social justice, health care and economic development. The word "mission" originates from 1598 when the Jesuits sent members abroad, derived from the Latin...
in Formosa were not believed due to British anti-Jesuit prejudice.
Chaplain and theological essayist
Innes eventually went to PortugalPortugal
Portugal , officially the Portuguese Republic is a country situated in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. Portugal is the westernmost country of Europe, and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the West and South and by Spain to the North and East. The Atlantic archipelagos of the...
as chaplain-general to the English forces. In the interim, Psalmanazar developed an opium addiction and became involved in several misguided business ventures, including a failed effort to market decorated fans purported to be from Formosa. Psalmanazar's claims became increasingly less credible as time went on and knowledge of Formosa from other sources began to contradict his own claims. His energetic defense of his imposture began to slacken. In 1706 he confessed, first to friends and then to the general public, although by this time London society had largely grown tired of the "Formosan craze".
In the following years Psalmanazar worked for a time as a clerk in an army regiment until some clergymen gave him money to study theology. Following this period, Psalmanazar participated — in a humble fashion — in London's Grub Street
Grub Street
Until the early 19th century, Grub Street was a street close to London's impoverished Moorfields district that ran from Fore Street east of St Giles-without-Cripplegate north to Chiswell Street...
literary milieu of book editing and pamphlet writing. He learned Hebrew
Hebrew language
Hebrew is a Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Culturally, is it considered by Jews and other religious groups as the language of the Jewish people, though other Jewish languages had originated among diaspora Jews, and the Hebrew language is also used by non-Jewish groups, such...
, co-authored Samuel Palmer
Samuel Palmer (printer)
-Life:He operated in a house in Bartholomew Close, London, later occupied by the two Jameses the typefounders. In 1725 Benjamin Franklin found work there, staying for a year, and was employed on the second edition of William Wollaston's Religion of Nature; during this period Franklin wrote A...
's A General History of Printing (1732), and contributed a number of articles to the Universal History. He even contributed to the book A Complete System of Geography and wrote about the real conditions in Formosa, pointedly criticising the hoax he had earlier perpetrated. In this period he appears to have become increasingly religious and disowned his youthful impostures. This new-found religiosity culminated in his anonymous publication of a book of theological essays in 1753.
Friend of Samuel Johnson and others
Although this last phase of Psalmanazar's life earned him far less fame than his earlier career as a fraud, it nonetheless resulted in some remarkable historical coincidences. Perhaps the most famous of these is the elderly Psalmanazar's unlikely friendship with a young Samuel Johnson, who served with him as a fellow Grub Street literary hack. In later years, Johnson reminisced that Psalmanazar was well known in his neighborhood as an eccentric but saintly figure, “whereof he was so well known and esteemed, that scarce any person, even children, passed him without showing him signs of respect”.Psalmanazar also interacted with a number of other important English literary figures of his age. In the early months of 1741, Psalmanazar appears to have sent the novelist Samuel Richardson
Samuel Richardson
Samuel Richardson was an 18th-century English writer and printer. He is best known for his three epistolary novels: Pamela: Or, Virtue Rewarded , Clarissa: Or the History of a Young Lady and The History of Sir Charles Grandison...
an unsolicited bundle of forty handwritten pages which attempted to continue the plotline of Richardson’s immensely popular epistolary novel Pamela
Pamela
Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded is an epistolary novel by Samuel Richardson, first published in 1740. It tells the story of a beautiful but poor 15-year old servant-maid named Pamela Andrews whose master, Mr. B, a nobleman, makes unwanted advances towards her after the death of his mother whose maid she...
. The novelist appears to have been unimpressed, calling Psalmanazar's attempted sequel “ridiculous and improbable”. In "A Modest Proposal
A Modest Proposal
A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People in Ireland From Being a Burden on Their Parents or Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Publick, commonly referred to as A Modest Proposal, is a Juvenalian satirical essay written and published anonymously by Jonathan Swift in...
", Jonathan Swift
Jonathan Swift
Jonathan Swift was an Irish satirist, essayist, political pamphleteer , poet and cleric who became Dean of St...
ridicules Psalmanazar in passing, sardonically citing “the famous Salamanaazor, a Native of the island of Formosa, who came from thence to London, above twenty Years ago,” as an eminent proponent of cannibalism. Finally, a novel by Tobias Smollett refers mockingly to “Psalmanazar, who, after having drudged half a century in the literary mill in all the simplicity and abstinence of an Asiatic, subsists on the charity of a few booksellers, just sufficient to keep him from the parish”.
Death and memoirs
Before he died in England, he was supported by an admirer's annual pension of £30.In the last years of his life, Psalmanazar wrote the book upon which much of contemporary knowledge of him rests: Memoirs of ** ** , Commonly Known by the Name of George Psalmanazar; a Reputed Native of Formosa. The book was published posthumously. These memoirs omit his real birth name, which is still unknown, but they contain a wealth of detail about his early life and the development of his impostures.
See also
- Constructed languageConstructed languageA planned or constructed language—known colloquially as a conlang—is a language whose phonology, grammar, and/or vocabulary has been consciously devised by an individual or group, instead of having evolved naturally...
- Constructed alphabet
- ImpostorImpostorAn impostor or imposter is a person who pretends to be somebody else, often to try to gain financial or social advantages through social engineering, but just as often for purposes of espionage or law enforcement....
- Travel LiteratureTravel literatureTravel literature is travel writing of literary value. Travel literature typically records the experiences of an author touring a place for the pleasure of travel. An individual work is sometimes called a travelogue or itinerary. Travel literature may be cross-cultural or transnational in focus, or...
- History of TaiwanHistory of TaiwanTaiwan was first populated by Negrito, and then Austronesian people. It was colonized by the Dutch in the 17th century, followed by an influx of Han Chinese including Hakka immigrants from areas of Fujian and Guangdong of mainland China, across the Taiwan Strait...
- Princess CarabooPrincess CarabooMary Baker was a noted impostor who went by the name Princess Caraboo. She pretended to be from a faraway island and fooled a British town for some months.-Biography:...
Further reading
- Psalmanazar, George, A Historical and Geographical Description of Formosa, in "Japan in Eighteenth-Century English Satirical Writings" in 5 vols., edited by Takau Shimada, Tokyo: Edition Synapse. ISBN 978-4-86166-034-4
- Keevak, Michael (2004) The Pretended Asian: George Psalmanazar's Eighteenth-Century Formosan Hoax, Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2004. ISBN 978-0-8143-3198
- Lynch, Jack (2005) 'Forgery as Performance Art: The Strange Case of George Psalmanazar,' 1650–1850: Ideas, Aesthetics, and Inquiries in the Early Modern Era 11, (2005) : p21–35.