∞∞∞∞∞∞∞
[page 2, column 2, continued:]
PLAGIARISMS, &C.
Our good friends of the Saturday Courier were imposed upon last week, in the publication as original of a story called “The Fatalist.” The article first appeared in Burton's Magazine for October 1840, under the title of “The Presentiment.” It was subsequently sent to this office, where the prior publication was detected and the story refused. The author would seem never to have written but this one article, of which he is disposed to make the most; and accordingly having failed in getting rid of it in one quarter as original he made the attempt in another and this time with more success. The story is by P. S. Ruter and is the same, except in a few verbal alterations in both Burton's Magazine and the Saturday Courier. Now we do not blame Mr. Ruter for wishing to have his story republished. Every may has a right to glorify himself. We only condemn the imposition practised on the public, in asserting that to be original that which is not. The offence is a milder form [[one or two lines lost in fold]] persons guilty, than is generally supposed. One of the most remarkable plagiarisms was perpetrated by Mr. Poe, late of the Broadway Journal, whose harshness as a critic and assumption of peculiar originality, make the fault, in his case, more glaring. This gentleman, a few years ago, in Philadelphia published a work on Conchology as original, when in reality it was a copy, nearly verbatim of “The Text Book of Conchology, by Capt. Thomas Brown,” printed in Glasgow in 1833, a duplicate of which we have in our library. Mr. Poe actually took out a copyright for the American edition of Capt. Brown's work, and, omitting all mention of the English original, pretended, in the preface, to have been under great obligations to several scientific gentlemen of this city. It is but justice to add, that in the second edition of this book, published lately in Philadelphia, the name of Mr. Poe is withdrawn from the title-page, and his initials only affixed to the preface. But the affair is one of the most curious on record, and we recommend it to Mr. Griswold as a rare morsel for his forthcoming “Curiosities of American Literature.”
There are some persons who follow the practice of committing plagiarisms and imposing them whenever they can, on editors. It is not always that a literary man however extensive his reading can detect these plagiarisms if adroitly managed. We noticed one of these plagiarisms the other day in a number of one of the fashionable magazines where a person calling himself O. H. Mildeberger succeeded in passing off some verses “To Myra” as his own when, in reality, they were composed by Thomson, and may be found in every edition of the complete works of the author of “The Seasons.” We occasionally receive poems, and even stories, which have appeared before, so that it is evident the genus plagiarist is quite extensive and has more than one species.
∞∞∞∞∞∞∞
Notes:
The copy of the Saturday Evening Post from which this text is taken was in the form of a microfilm. Unfortunately, the microfilm was made without sufficient care to flatten out a bad fold in the middle of the page of the original. In consequence, a line or two in the middle of this article, which falls in the middle of the page, is obscured due to the fold.
What is probably most interesting about this article is that, from the perspective of a publisher, Poe's penchant for revising his works counts as a kind of plagiarism.
∞∞∞∞∞∞∞
[S:0 - SEP, microfilm, 1846] - Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore - Bookshelf - Plagiarism, &c (Anonymous, 1846)