The Raven's Bride

It's half-past three in the morning here in Stockholm, and I'm wired. A problem has arisen, and I have thought about it a little and this post is my solution.

There have been a lot of articles about the QR Markham/Quentin Rowan affair, and some have mentioned me, and this blog. One such article appeared in The New York Observer, and another in The Huffington Post. I noticed that at the foot of both those articles someone had made the following comment:

“Earlier this year, Lenore Hart's "The Raven's Bride" contained many passages that were a direct lift from a 1956 novel, "The Very Young Mrs. Poe," by Cothburn O'Neal. She got away with it--I suppose because O'Neal's novel is so little-known--and no doubt Markham believed he could get away with it as well.

I wonder how many other cases of blatant plagiarism are lurking out there?”

That's something I've also wondered. I hadn't heard of either book, or of this at all. And I could have simply ignored it, especially as I have been very caught up with the Rowan stuff and am at a crucial stage in my current book, that stage being I have to deliver it very soon. And while I have now been involved in helping to expose two fairly high-profile cases of plagiarism, that has never been my plan or intention. I read about Johann Hari on Twitter one day, like a lot of other people. I spotted a reference to Assassin of Secrets in a James Bond forum, and it was closer to home, as I had blurbed the book and my last blog post was a Q and A with the man. I really really really dislike plagiarism, but it's not some campaign of mine, despite all appearances to the contrary.

But I can't leave a comment like that sitting there. Why should Quentin Rowan be exposed, and someone else - if they are a plagiarist - not be, simply because nobody bothered to google it to follow up?

So I googled it, and it brought up this blog post. I haven't read either book. None of the examples were quite as stunningly verbatim as Rowan's when I started plugging his phrases into Google Books. But I read it again, carefully. And yes: Lenore Hart is a plagiarist.

I started tweeting about it, and the author of that blog post and some other people started discussing it. Hart is a well-established and well-respected novelist, published by St Martin's Press. The allegations on that blog were drawn to her attention several months ago, and she wrote an astonishing and utterly bonkers 18,000-word response, arguing why all the similarities noted between her novel The Raven's Bride and the 1956 novel The Very Young Mrs. Poe by Cothburn O'Neal were all perfectly explainable and not at all due to rampant plagiarism on her behalf.

Her defence is as unconvincing as it is prolix. I haven't read The Raven's Bride, which received a starred revew from Publishers Weekly, or The Very Young Mrs. Poe, but the examples speak for themselves. However, bearing in mind this very long document, I wanted to think of a quick way to get this book withdrawn. With the Rowan book, I emailed his editor citing several examples. I don't know Hart's editor, I don't own either book, and I don't want to spend days working through it - only for Hart to reply with an 18,000-word defence that bores people into submission, which is what I suppose happened last time. St Martin's have also previously been informed of Hart's plagiarism by at least two parties, and from what I've been told never even bothered to respond in either case.

So I'm not going to go that route and potentially waste a lot of time. Instead, I'm hoping to shine some more light on it in this post and, knowing that some bloggers and journalists may now be reading this blog because of the Rowan stuff, am leaving it up to you lot. Search, and you will find incontrovertible proof that Lenore Hart is a plagiarist. She has written quite a lot, including under pseudonyms, and I suspect some of that work may be plagiarized as well. But even if not, The Raven's Bride most definitely is, and St Martin's should withdraw it, just as Little, Brown responsibly did with Assassin of Secrets when it was brought to their attention. I can't spend the time going through the weeds on this. But here are just two quick examples (of many) that prove she is a plagiarist, followed by her amazing defences of them. Oh, and do read this interview, in which she is shameless enough to be condescending about the novel from which she stole.

From The Very Young Mrs. Poe by Cothburn O'Neal, 1956:

'Beyond Hopewell and the confluence of the Appomattox, the James grew narrower and wound in great loops around Bermuda Hundred. Further on, the current was swifter, foaming against gray boulders and lush green islands which twisted the channel torturously.'

From The Raven's Bride by Lenore Hart, 2011: 

'Beyond the confluence of the Appomattox, the James grew narrower and wound in great loops about Bermuda Hundred. The current ran more swiftly there, shoving its relentless force against gray rocks and lush low peninsulas which twisted the channel into a shallow treacherous serpent whose narrow back we must ride.'

That first sentence is very nearly verbatim from O'Neal, and is blatant plagiarism. It alone should be enough to have this novel withdrawn. But Hart, instead of raising her hands and saying 'Okay, you got me, I'm a plagiarist, here's my mealy-mouthed apology admitting what you've already discovered and I'm off to Columbia for a few months', decided instead to try to defend it, thus:

'When I Googled the “confluence of the Appomattox and James” phrase I got 1,960 hits, in documents ranging from historical society pamphlets to real estate brochures. When I added the word “Hopewell” the number rose to 26,200 results.'

Extraordinary. Because after taking the words "the James grew narrower and wound in great loops" from The Raven's Bride and entering them in quotes into Google Books, I got just one hit, which was The Very Young Mrs. Poe by Cothburn O'Neal. Fancy that.

Anyway, Hart went on in her defence, Googling is for the birds:

'I didn’t need to do this, though, since my husband has taken our sailboat across the Bay and up the James on research cruises for both his historical books and mine. Bermuda Hundred was the site of the first incorporated town in the colony of Virginia, a known treacherous spot even today, and the river does in fact loop around it, in a serpentine way. So I suppose could have said “snaked.” But I didn’t.'

No. But I don't think that is really the point. And 'Bermuda Hundred was the site of the first incorporated town in the colony of Virginia' is plagiarized from Wikipedia. Yes, in her defence against allegations of plagiarism, Hart plagiarized. 

Hart should know full well what plagiarism is. A good clear definition can be found in this 2008-2009 PDF prospectus from Elizabethtown College in Pennsylvania:  

'Plagiarism is defined as taking and using the writings or ideas of another without acknowledging the source.'

In the same document, you will also find Lenore Hart listed as that year's Visiting Assistant Professor of English. As well as being an acclaimed novelist, she does a lot of teaching of writing, and is currently on the faculty of the Graduate Creative Writing Program at Wilkes University in Pennsylvania.

Next example. The protagonist of both novels is a real but rather obscure historical figure - Edgar Allan Poe's wife Virginia. Cothburn O'Neal told his story of 'the very young Mrs. Poe' in the third person, and Lenore Hart tells it in the first. So O’Neal: 

“She turned to look out across the basin toward Federal Hill.”

And Hart:

“I turned away to look out across the basin toward Federal Hill.”

You can't coincidentally write a sentence that similar to someone else's. It is plagiarism. But Hart defends it, and in style. She points out that

'...my Virginia is looking AWAY from the familiar (Baltimore proper). and the past, toward the unknown (the shipping channel) that would soon convey her to her new life. The one in which she imagines she would soon, magically, become “fully a woman,” as she calls it. However, as she looks she also notes the incoming cargoes of doomed shellfish and dead waterfowl bound for market (all on the properly-identified commercial fishing boats of the era) and begins to feel terror. She suddenly, briefly is unable to breathe – this will become an important repetitive motif in my novel. In fiction, whether historical or contemporary, it is considered ideal to SHOW emotions through actions and imagery, rather than to summarize or baldly explain them, as in a nonfiction essay. If my goal was unclear... then perhaps I was too subtle here.'

No, Lenore Hart. You were not too subtle here. You just added the word 'away' to another writer's sentence, and it is just one of many, many examples of your blatant plagiarism.

Can I now hand this over to someone else, please? I think this deserves to be exposed, and this book withdrawn at once, but I really don't have the time or energy to work on it any more at the moment. Over to you, bold bloggers, tweeters, Facebookers, journalists, editors, agents, publishers...