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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/39645
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/39645
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

I don't think so.

## It's purely a literary device

And an old one, at that. Some classical, widely recognized authors have used it in the past (Manzoni's _Promessi Sposi_ - or [The Betrothed](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Betrothed_(Manzoni_novel)%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FThe_Betrothed_(Manzoni_novel)&usg=AOvVaw1S1-SrDn45g0aTQeAZk51U) comes to my mind. Another one is Cervantes' _Don Quixote_). Authors used to do this for a variety of reasons - for example, Manzoni did it so he could place his work in the past and avoid censorship for being critical of the government of northern Italy.

You may find other - more recent - examples [in this researchgate question](https://www.researchgate.net/post/References_for_found_manuscripts_novels_and_stories) or searching "found manuscript" device on Google.

Aside from being a well-established literary device, you won't risk your publisher denying you anything. They would need a copy of the "found" manuscript to claim ownership, and such copies don't exist, and you can (I suppose) easily prove authorship of anything you've written.

If your work is good - so good that they want to claim it - they will have better chances working with you rather than trying to put up such a scam.

**Update and Edit:** My previous statement about classical Greek and Latin authors using this device remains unproved, so I have ruled it out from the answer. At the present time, I could only find information about [Dictys Cretensis, Ephemeris belli Troja](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dictys_Cretensis) as a possible example, even if it could be a bordeline example between literary forgery and pseudoepigrapha.

I have found other notable examples:

- [The Castle of Otranto](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Castle_of_Otranto) by Walpole, a 1764 precursor to the gothic novel,
- [Parzival](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parzival) by Wolfram von Eschenbach, from the 13th century,
- Nabokov's [Pale Fire](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pale_Fire) in modern times (it's interesting since it references two fictional authors instead of just one) - 

Original score: 3