5 Mainstream Authors Who Have Been Accused Of Plagiarism

Every now and then, there’s an artist who seems to have taken ‘inspiration’ from something that was previously done. No doubt, there’s a lot of original content out there but it’s extracted and molded off something from the past. Recently, Chetan Bhagat has been in the limelight for plagiarizing content for one of his novels. Well, our experts at Nirmal Singh Lotus Green have compiled the following list of mainstream authors who have been accused of plagiarizing content before:

Jane Goodall: Seeds of Hope

The Seeds of Hope author was accused of taking out content from websites such as Wikipedia. An author in The Washington post spotted the similarity in the Wikipedia article and wrote about it. Naturally, Jane was very embarrassed and went on to re-publish the book with revised content. She blamed the plagiarism charge on poor note taking skills and called it a careless mistake.

J.K. Rowling: Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

In 2004, the author was accused of lifting content from late author Adrian Jacob’s book, The Adventures of Willy the Wizard. Reportedly, the estate of the late author had claimed that the Goblet of Fire edition had parts stolen from his book. The Court of Appeal had directed the estate to pay £1.5m as security for costs but since no payment was made, the claim failed.

Kaavya Vishwanathan: How Opal Mehta got kissed, got wild and got a life

The debut book of the author Kaavya Vishwanathan was accused of plagiarizing content from the author Megan McCafferty’s Sloppy first and second helpings. The details of the content lifted were published in the Harvard University’s newsletter- Harvard crimson in 2006. While she claimed that the plagiarism was unintentional, but it sure meant that her other book contracts and a movie deal were cancelled.

Stephenie Meyer: Breaking Dawn

The Twilight author faced a row of controversies when a college student, Jordan Scott, claimed that Stephenie had stolen parts of her book Breaking Dawn from his little-known novel, The Nocturne. Later, Hachette publication received a ‘cease and deceit’ order, after which the publication asked for a copy of his book, which was never submitted. Afterwards, the publication stated: "The Twilight Saga is entirely the creation of Ms Meyer...This claim is frivolous and will be defended vigorously."

Dan Brown: Da Vinci Code

It was the respected author’s most successful book but there was a lot of controversy around it when Dan Brown was accused of lifting content from not one but two books. Subsequently, a copyright case was filed against Brown by the authors of the book: The Holy Grail and The Holy Blood. In fact, there was another one filed by the author Lewis Purdue who claimed that certain events were lifted off her novel, Daughter of God. However, both the claims were found to be false.