before he decided to go head to head with P. John Banvard was an artist whose colossal panoramic canvasses (one behemoth depiction of the entire eastern shore of the Mississippi River was simply known as The Three Mile Painting) made him the richest and most famous artist of his day. Collins brings them back to glorious life. They hold in common the silenced aftermath of failure, the name that rings no bells. Among their number are scientists, artists, writers, entrepreneurs, and adventurers, from across the centuries and around the world.

Here are thirteen unforgettable portraits of forgotten people: men and women who might have claimed their share of renown but who, whether from ill timing, skullduggery, monomania, the tinge of madness, or plain bad luck-or perhaps some combination of them all-leapt straight from life into thankless obscurity.

Paul Collins' Banvard's Folly is a different kind of book. Kennedy's Profiles in Courage, Giorgio Vasari's Lives of the Artists, and Samuel Johnson's Lives of the Poets are classic celebrations of the greatest, the brightest, the eternally constellated. Those enshrined in its annals are men and women whose ideas, accomplishments, or personalities have dominated, endured, and most important of all, found champions. Includes profiles of the eccentric panorama painter John Banvard, the delusional physicist Rene Blandlot, and the Shakespeare forger William Henry Ireland. About the Book This impeccably documented book offers portraits of famously forgotten men and women, who leap from the ash heap of thankless obscurity and directly onto the page.

The Book of William by Paul Collins