Watch Clifford Irving Videos

Clifford Michael Irving (born November 5, 1930) is an American author of novels and works of nonfiction, but best known for using forged handwritten letters to convince his publisher into accepting a fake "autobiography" of reclusive businessman Howard Hughes in the early 1970s. After Hughes denounced him and sued the publisher, Irving confessed the hoax and was subsequently sentenced to two-and-a-half years in prison, serving 17 months. Irving grew up in New York City, the son of Dorothy and Jay Irving, a Collier's cover artist and the creator of the syndicated comic strip Pottsy, about a... MORE

Clifford Michael Irving (born November 5, 1930) is an American author of novels and works of nonfiction, but best known for using forged handwritten letters to convince his publisher into accepting a fake "autobiography" of reclusive businessman Howard Hughes in the early 1970s. After Hughes denounced him and sued the publisher, Irving confessed the hoax and was subsequently sentenced to two-and-a-half years in prison, serving 17 months. Irving grew up in New York City, the son of Dorothy and Jay Irving, a Collier's cover artist and the creator of the syndicated comic strip Pottsy, about a New York policeman. After graduating in 1947 from Manhattan's High School of Music and Art, Irving attended Cornell University, had a two-year marriage (to Nina Wilcox) and worked on his first novel, On a Darkling Plain (Putnam, 1956), while he was a copy boy at The New York Times. He completed his second novel, The Losers (1958), as he traveled about Europe. He led an adventurous life and based himself for many years on the Spanish Mediterranean island of Ibiza. In 1957, he sailed on a three-masted schooner from Mexico to France; in 1958, he spent many months in Marrakech working on a CBC-BBC LESS