The venerable London publisher hoped the account of how the funerary violin was almost wiped out by Vatican-organised purges might sell a few hundred copies to specialist readers.

But this weekend the company was left to reflect on the most embarrassing episode in its 108-year history after the book was confirmed as a hoax.

Rohan Kriwaczek, the author of the The Incomplete History of the Art of Funerary Violin, yesterday admitted to The Times that he had duped one of publishing’s most distinguished names.

His story begins last year when Duckworth was approached with details of a secret archive belonging to the Guild of Funerary Violinists, of which Mr Kriwaczek was the latest president. It contained a fascinating account of how a new type of music emerged during the Protestant Revolution in Europe, which sought to recognise the deceased and the mourners’ sense of grief.

The music thrived under the auspices of the guild, with members duelling at funerals to wring the most tears from mourners. But then the tradition fell victim to the Great Funerary Purges of the mid-19th century that saw it virtually erased from history.

In fact, the 500-year-old musical tradition had been invented entirely by Mr Kriwaczek using manuscripts bought on eBay, photographs from antique shops, names from the graves in his favourite cemetery and a number of forged documents.

Mr Kriwaczek, a 38-year-old busker from Brighton, became interested in funeral music after graduating from the Royal Academy of Music in the mid-1990s with a master’s in composition. He rejected the avant garde music that he was taught and instead felt a closer relationship with the audience when playing at funerals.

“But of course nobody would book me because no one considered having a violinist at a funeral,” said Mr Kriwaczek, who busks to supplement his income as a music teacher. “So I thought, let’s make this part of funeral culture and create a musical genre.

“I founded the Guild of Funerary Violinists and then I thought if you had a guild it had to have a history.”

Creating the guild meant carefully researching the political, religious and social histories of the time to ensure that its activities were placed in context.

He was helped by his father Paul, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and former BBC producer. Mr Kriwaczek, a father of two, also wrote music scores to demonstrate how the funerary violin developed, crediting many of them to the fictional composer Hieronymous Gratenfleiss. He gave the guild a motto: Nullus Funus Sine Fidula (No Funeral Without A Fiddle).

Researching and writing the book took 18 months before he began to print individual copies from his home computer.

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