My Courtship and Its Consequences by Henry Wikoff

Henry Wikoff, an American gentleman who may have the dubious honor of being the inspiration for the phrase “confidence man” (later shortened in popular usage to “con man”), in 1852 endured a world-famous trial for abducting his own fiancée in Genoa, then part of the constitutional Kingdom of Sardinia. The charges were considered utterly spurious or at least excessive by many, justly warranted by others, but regardless of the merits of the charges the trial was a sensation, having everything necessary to engage the public’s fascination: a wealthy heiress abducted in the night, a gentleman accused of being a fortune-seeker and spy, guns, chloroform, an exotic foreign locale, and of course romance.

And if the various reports of the trial in newspapers were not enough to make it a sensation, when Henry Wikoff, after serving fifteen months in a flea-infested Italian prison, returned to society with a vengeance to restore his reputation by publishing this autobiographical version of the events that had transpired, well, of course, the book was an instant bestseller in both America and Britain.