![](https://cdn.statically.io/img/static01.nyt.com/packages/flash/multimedia/ICONS/transparent.png)
Clifford Irving, left, facing reporters in 1972, as a grand jury in Manhattan took up the literary-hoax case against him.
Jack Manning/The New York Times
Clifford Irving
Died on December 19, 2017 at age 87
Mr. Irving perpetrated one of the biggest literary hoaxes of the 20th century in the early 1970s when he concocted a supposedly authorized autobiography of the billionaire Howard Hughes based on meetings and interviews that never took place.
Notable Deaths 2017
Remembering Mary Tyler Moore, Chuck Berry, Jerry Lewis, David Rockefeller, Trisha Brown, Glen Campbell, Dick Gregory, Edith Windsor, Sam Shepard, Tom Petty and many others who died this year.