If you're going to accuse someone of plagiarism, do it in style...

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Published by: EmmaD on 3rd Aug 2011 | View all blogs by EmmaD

Angry at the similarities between Cartland's Knave of Hearts... and her own These Old Shades, Georgette Heyer told her agent "I think I could have borne it better had Miss Cartland not been so common-minded, so salacious and so illiterate. I think ill enough of the Shades, but, good God! That 19-year-old work has more style, more of what it takes, than this offal which she has written at the age of 46!"

Wielding language like a rapier, in the manner of the best of her heroines, Heyer says that Cartland "displays an abysmal ignorance of her period. Cheek by jowl with some piece of what I should call special knowledge (all of which I can point out in my books), one finds an anachronism so blatant as to show clearly that Miss Cartland knows rather less about the period than the average schoolgirl," adding that she would "rather by far that a common thief broke in and stole all the silver".

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2011/aug/02/georgette-hayer-decries-plagiarism

Comments

21 Comments

by Nibs 9 months ago

Oh my!
Nothing to be said to that is there.
by Caducean Whisks 9 months ago

Wonderful. That's telling her. Go Georgie!
by curlykats 9 months ago

Excellent, that's given me a good laugh :-)
by Weens 9 months ago

Mmmmmm! Very interesting.
by EmmaD 9 months ago

Isn't it fab! Bless her. And it just shows why her fiction is so not sweetly pretty mush.

Can't wait for the biography - I've read some bits of it and it's excellent.
by Gerry 9 months ago

But what about Barbie's well know pre-post-modern ironic parallel-world-ism? Or didn't Georgie know about it?
by EmmaD 9 months ago

Ah, yes, there's that, of course...
by John Taylor 9 months ago

I can imagine Cartland's pinkness and fluffiness getting pinker and spikier and spitting with venom at the mere thought that she might have... 'Oh. Well. Better not try that one again. And why didn't my secretary warn me? Fire her!'
by Spangles 9 months ago

I heard a great story in the late 70s about BC and her then paperback editor (or, presumably, one of the many as she had zillions of novels published). The editor turned up at the front door of Cartland Towers for a meeting, but got so firmly up BC's nose that she asked him to leave through the tradesman's entrance!
by EmmaD 9 months ago

What a great story! She was obviously the most ghastly woman. I yield to none in my worship of Heyer, and I admire the craft and storytelling skill of the big commercial sellers whether or not their writing's to my own particular taste, but Cartland doesn't even have that saving grace - the few I've tried are utter drivel.
by Caducean Whisks 9 months ago

Me too - even if I don't care for a book, I still (mostly) appreciate the skill in the writing, but Cartland? I've only tried one because I thought I ought to and it was more boring to read than a shopping list. Which begs the question - how did she sell so many? Is it precisely because she didn't challenge the reader? That every yawnsome twist and turn was predictable? That her characters were cartoon and therefore cosy? That you didn't really have to pay attention while you read and it didn't matter if you skipped a chapter or six? I didn't even find it escapist, since I didn't believe or relate to anybody in the book and cared less what happened to them.
It mystifies me. I'd like to understand the appeal.
by stephenterry 9 months ago

On that basis CW, I should sell mega numbers... or was it the romantic mush that women like?
by Caducean Whisks 9 months ago

I don't *know* if it's the romantic mush that women like, Stephen - I'm asking! Is it?
And I wouldn't expect you to be in the same category at all - I thought you wrote gritty crime thrillers; do you weave in shopping lists, dastardly lords, virgin Barbie dolls and secret princesses? It's a recipe for success!
by stephenterry 9 months ago

*Shucks* how about shopping for guns, serial killers, a bullet under the princess' mattress - and naturally plenty of virgin Barbie dolls' for playmates...
by Tenacityflux 9 months ago

I used to live near Dame babby ( as we locals called her) and bizzarely, ended up at a dinner party with her two sons and her gay best friend, who lived in a cottage on her estate. It was an evening which will live long with me, as it was such a character study! One son I remember, was married to an ex ballet dancer, who was clearly after the money and resentful that it was all tied up in property; the gay couple were made up of a would-be Pagan who laughed like a girl and was clearly the more feminine side of the equation; and his partner who was training to be an under taker, and who was some other minor aristo. We got to know them because the more macho member of the gay couple had a penchant for rough trade, and had been chatting up my then husband when he worked in the local off-license. Ironically, or perhaps thankfully, they liked me a whole lot more when it came to it, and I used to go round quite a lot and they made a fuss of me. It was an odd night though, I remember the Ballet dance crying because my Ex said his Dad sent him postcards every week, and she thought it was beautiful. (It wasn't, he was just emotionally distant and odd, he wrote the same thing on five cards and dispatched them weekly to his children and friends we later discovered.) And then she got drunk and confessed to me she was sleeping with the Polish gardener in the tool shed, appropriately. I saw him once and frankly, so would I, in her position (And quite a few others, given half a chance!)
Though now I think of it, maybe they weren't her sons, as I thought in her bio-pic she had girls, or maybe that's wrong too. I did get to see a lot of her dresses, the camper one of the couple had a load - even the won she wore to Dianna's funeral. They were Hardy Amies, not very well finished, in my opinion.
Never have read her books though, can't see why you would. I think they sold a bit like people collect Wade Wimsey's, once you've got one you sort of get the rest, though God knows why!
by EmmaD 9 months ago

Tenacity, that is the MOST fabulous story - thanks for that. When's the novel about the mad old romantic novelist Benedicta Coachplace coming out, then?
by Tenacityflux 9 months ago

Oooh, don't tempt me - I love the idea of her no noticing all the gay/straight romping going on under he stuck up nose!
by EmmaD 9 months ago

Go on then - I dare you!
by John Taylor 9 months ago

Tenacity, you have enough material there for a bucketful of novels that have already been writen, never mind new ones! Talk about life imitating fiction...
by Old Fat Prop 9 months ago

You lot should all colaborate (or cohabitate) on a telly mini series. It would be great or at least a marvelous lawsuit.
by Tenacityflux 9 months ago

Oooh, when I've finished the two I've got on the go - you bet!