Bram Stoker spent his last years collecting history's great frauds: pretenders to thrones, alchemists and witch-finders, the Tichborne Claimant — and the strange Cotswold legend that Queen Elizabeth was really a boy.

The Verdict

Bram Stoker laid out each of these cases with a novelist's relish and a historian's files. Now the bench is yours: for each figure, rule Honest, Impostor, or Never settled — then compare your ruling with the book's own.

The court requires JavaScript to sit. The cases themselves are all in the book — start with the contents page.

Rights & ReuseThe complete text of Famous Impostors (1910) is in the public domain in the United States — like all works published before 1928 — and is free to read, download, quote, teach from, and reuse. This digital edition (its transcription, restored images, and site design) is © 2026 PhotoOpAI, and any editorial commentary we add is clearly marked as ours; the underlying public-domain text carries no such restriction.