An American fan of Glenn Gould has been charged with stealing artifacts that once belonged to the famed Canadian pianist.

Barbara Moore, 62, of Austin, Texas, has been charged in New York City with criminal possession of stolen property, grand larceny and attempted grand larceny.

Pianist Glenn Gould was famous for his Bach interpretations.

Moore is accused of taking photographs, books, compositions, sound and video recordings, published and unpublished writings, correspondence, doodles and personal items that Gould had donated to Library and Archives Canada before his death in 1982 at the age of 51.

Moore was in custody Friday and unavailable for comment.

The theft and the thief came to light through some academic detective work by Victoria, B.C., author Kevin Bazzana, who wrote a scholarly biography titled Glenn Gould: The Performer in the Work.

Bazzana perked up his ears when he heard that a page from Gould's notepad was being sold by a Manhattan art dealer. He checked the dealer's website and recognized a page of Gould's doodles that he had come across while researching his book.

"It has had some doodles he made," Bazzana told the CBC's Nancy Westaway. "On one of them, he practised his signatures obsessively ... It says 'Glenn Gould' about twenty times on the page.

"And I thought to myself, I remember looking at this page when I was studying for the biography and I actually mention this page in my book."

Library staff contacted

Bazzana wondered why the page was for sale in New York since it was supposed to be filed at the National Library of Canada. He contacted the library staff, who told him the page was still in the collection, where it was supposed to be.

He checked the website again and realized the item for sale was a forgery.

A little more digging turned up the name of a woman who had tried to sell the page of doodles to the dealer. That name rang a bell with workers at Library and Archives Canada, who recognized her as somebody who had studied the Gould collection nearly 20 years before.

Still more digging, this time by the district attorney's office in Manhattan, turned up a raft of stolen books, compositions and forged documents.

Jennifer Kushner, a spokeswoman for the district attorney's office, told the Canadian Press that Moore allegedly contacted a Manhattan art dealer and offered to sell him items from her personal collection.

The dealer bought the items from Moore, unaware that they had been stolen, and then listed them on his website, Kushner said.