Elizabeth Goudge - Plagiarism Victim

Plagiarism Victim

Early in 1993, Crane's Morning by Indrani Aikath-Gyaltsen was published by Penguin Books in India, the author's second novel. In the U.S. it was published by Ballantine Books and enthusiastically reviewed for The New York Times and The Washington Post. For the Post, Paul Kafka called it "at once achingly familiar and breathtakingly new. believes we all live in one borderless culture." In February, the Times called it "magic" and "full of humour and insight", although it conceded that the "deliberately old-fashioned" style "sometimes verges on the sentimental."

One month later, a reader from Ontario informed Goudge's publisher that her book The Rosemary Tree (Hodder & Stoughton, 1956) had been "taken over without any acknowledgment whatsoever". Soon another reader informed a newspaper reporter and there was a scandal.

The Rosemary Tree had been "pop fiction, meant to be consumed and forgotten". It featured a Devonshire vicarage.

(quote) When it was first published in 1956, The New York Times Book Review criticized its "slight plot" and "sentimentally ecstatic" approach.

After Aikath-Gyaltsen recast the setting to an Indian village, changing the names and switching the religion to Hindu but often keeping the story word-for-word the same, it received better notices.

Kafka later remarked about his Post review: "there's a phrase 'aesthetic affirmative action.' If something comes from exotic parts, it's read very differently than if it's domestically grown. ... Maybe Elizabeth Goudge is a writer who hasn't gotten her due."

Several months later, Indrani Aikath-Gyaltsen was dead, perhaps a suicide, but there were suspicious circumstances and requests for investigation.