The Ern Malley Affair

The Ern Malley Affair was a famous literary hoax in 1943, where Australian writers Max Harris and James McAuley created a fictional poet, Ern Malley, and composed intentionally absurd poems to parody modernist poetry. They submitted these to a literary magazine, which published them, believing they were genuine. Critics later recognized the poems as fabricated and deliberately nonsensical, exposing the hoax. The incident highlighted conflicts over artistic authenticity and the tensions between traditional and modernist literary movements, and it remains a notable example of literary deception and satire.