5 world famous authors who were accused of harsh plagiarism (Part 1)

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

Today plagiarism is a ubiquitous phenomenon, from which, it would seem, it is simply impossible to get rid of. And it is not only novice authors who sin with them, but even those who were at the very top of the literary world. So what famous authors have sinned plagiarism, and whether these people managed to get out of the water dry.

1. Christian Serruja

This woman was known for her novels before, in 2019, she was accused of plagiarizing not even one book, but dozens of other publications. Rumor has it that she literally copied fragments from other people's books, after passing them off as her own. For the first time plagiarism in the works of Christian was discovered by a girl named Courtney Milan, who recognized her own work in the text, which she had previously posted on the blog. After that, many authors began to talk about finding fragments of their plots and ideas in Christian books. Soon, this even led to the fact that Serrui's books began to be examined literally under a microscope, looking for fragments of plagiarism there.

Christian was only twenty years old when she worked as a lawyer in Brazil, after which she moved and decided to get creative, because, as she herself said, she always loved to write. In less than seven years, she managed to write about 30 novels, which, of course, is very impressive.

However, instead of confessing to plagiarism, Christian acted in a completely unexpected way. She blamed the author, whom she hired for $ 5 an hour, but this did not improve the opinion of her in the writing community. Because of this, she was forced to close her Twitter, as well as her own website. Her books are no longer on sale in most stores.

2. Kaaviya Vishwanathan

In 2006, when Kaavia was 16 years old, she published her first novel, How Opal Mehta Kissed, Lost and Come to Life, which became a major discovery in the writing world. Viswanathan at that time was a student at Harvard, and her main character was just a girl who, with all her might, wanted to get into this educational institution. The book had a very striking slogan: "How far are you willing to go to get what you want?"

After publication, the book quickly skyrocketed to bestseller status, which also included Meghan McCafferty's novel about a young girl. Of course, this could not but make people want to compare the two books. And it is because of this that the book of Kaaviya failed. After careful checking, it was discovered that many of the sections from Megan's book Kaavia had simply copied and pasted into hers. Reporters from The New York Times found at least 29 plagiarized passages, and when they talked about it, Kaavia confessed to unknowingly copying someone else's work. The book, which earned nearly $ 500,000, was recalled from stores. However, this scandal did not harm the girl, who soon began a new life and took up a career in the legislative field.

3. William Lauder

Plagiarism was never new to writing, even in 1747, when William Lauder decided to do something similar. William was a scientist at the University of Edinburgh who is said to have been very saddened by the rejection of the international community, while he himself dreamed of fame. To do this, he came up with a cunning plan, how to provide himself with fame and improve his reputation, namely - he decided to call the work of John Milton "Paradise Lost" plagiarism.

He created a series of essays, which, from his point of view, proved that such a genius poem by Milton is in fact plagiarism, which is filled with other people's quotes. At the same time, he hoped that this would provide him with a reputation as a genius scientist. And in order to convince people that he was right, he inserted lines from Milton's verse into translations of old works, thereby trying to create a source of plagiarism. Thus, in an attempt to prove that Milton used plagiarism in his poem, William himself did it, rewriting his lines and adding them to earlier authors. Of course, he did not even think that the originals of the texts did not actually contain these lines and that his fraud would soon be revealed. Lauder was forced to admit he made a mistake and publicly apologize. This forced him to end his scientific career and leave the university in order to soon open a small shop in the West Indies.

4. Stephen Ambrose

Before the plagiarism story, Stephen was known as a bestselling journalist, but when he published his new book about a WWII bomber pilot and people discovered plagiarism there, it was a real scandal. Another historian found his own words in the text, but it was not so simple. Ambrose indicated this person in the footnotes as a source of information, but did not add quotation marks in the text itself, which would indicate that certain passages were borrowed. This was probably a simple mistake and oversight for which Stephen apologized and another author accepted the apology.

But this incident forced Forbes journalists to dig a little deeper. They found many more fragments that belonged to other authors in Ambrose's books. But Stephen himself reacted to this with less understanding than in the first case, and therefore noted with irritation: After Stephen's death in 2002, journalists said that his most famous work, which described the life of Dwight D. Eisenhower, was in fact the case was based on fictitious events and fabricated interviews. Stephen claimed to have spent hours in the president's own office, learning firsthand. However, the data indicate that they met for a maximum of five hours during the entire time of writing the text. Plus, in the days when Ambrose said they met with the president, he was actually far outside of his office.

5. Martin Luther-King Jr

He was called a truly great man and a brilliant scientist. But it turned out that in fact this is a great exaggeration. In 1990, it was discovered that much of his dissertation, Comparing the Concept of God in the Reflections of Paul Tillich and Henry Nelson Wiemann, was based on plagiarism. The historian who studied King's work reluctantly admitted that he had discovered many ideas, assumptions, and even entire passages of text that were taken from other sources without their reference in the footnotes.

Typically, when a piece of work is proven to be plagiarized, the university concerned considers it offensive and withdraws it from the library. But for obvious reasons, King Jr.'s dissertation is still available for reading at Boston University, and even though a group of scholars even met for advice on this issue, they still decided not to deprive him of his doctorate.

King Jr.'s most famous speech, "I Have a Dream," is also believed to be plagiarized, and in fact belongs to political writer Archibald Carrie Jr. The media even presented passages that were strikingly similar. However, despite the fact that the author of the text is in fact Carrie, King Jr., as we know, delivered this speech much better, which is why it influenced an entire generation of people.

It is difficult to say whether these authors really regret their rash actions or not. But the fact that these, who starred in the most ridiculous films in the entire history of cinema, still remember these roles with a kindly quiet word is a fact.