For a long time I’ve followed the discussions about plagiarism and historical fiction – or literature in general – or other matters pertaining to historical fiction particularly. How much can you quote without plagiarizing? When an author uses the words of an historical character taken from diaries or journals or a speech – their real words – and puts them into dialogue for the sake of the story – how much is okay? Maria Doria Russell provides an answer of sorts:
Her book Doc is great but I’ll bet she did have some issues there due to the diaries of Kate Harony, in addition to the issues she talks about in her blog (above.)
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I’ve been on a reading jag and finished 4 books which were sitting here bogging me down – Elizabeth the Queen by Sally Beddell Smith (2012), Byzantium by Judith Herrin (2009), River of Smoke by Amitov Ghosh (2011) and The Crime of Martin Sostre by Vincent Copeland (1970). I’ve blogged about the first two but I’ve still got the Ghosh and Copeland books to do. The first two books for a reading group which reads very slowly and that doesn’t work so well for me – I just finished them up.
Becky's Books - 