Three short stories by the late J.D. Salinger, author of the modern-day classic "Catcher In the Rye," recently leaked online in PDF format, ABC News reports.
An anonymous person uploaded the files to Imgur, an image storage site, which contain the previously unpublished manuscripts entitled "Paula," "The Ocean Full of Bowling Balls" and "Birthday Boy."
Two months ago on eBay, a book called "Three Stories Unpublished" by J.D. Salinger was listed, the seller claiming that the book, which was published in London in 1999, contained said three stories. The winning bidder won the manuscript for $110.34.
"The story is probably an unauthorized version transcribed longhand in our reading room. It's also possible that it came from photocopies of the typescript probably made before the mid-1980s when we decided that we would no longer allow photo-duplication for any work by Salinger," Martin A. Mbugua, spokesperson of Princeton University, said in a statement released earlier this week.
According to Los Angeles book critic David Ulin, the stores are legitimately Salinger's work.
"I've never read 'The Ocean Full of Bowling Balls': It's part of a collection of Salinger material at the Princeton University Library and available only to scholars who are supervised as they read. I have read the other two stories, however, at the University of Texas' Ransom Center, and the versions of them in 'Three Stories' are the real deal," Ulin wrote.
