Saturday, February 20, 2010

JK Rowling and the plagiarism charge

Did you read about this? J K Rowling says she'll go to court to have a claim of plagiarism made against her by the estate of the late Adrian Jacobs (who died in 1997) dismissed because it is without merit. She says the accusation is "not only unfounded but absurd" and said she was " "saddened that yet another claim" has been made about the source of the Harry Potter books. The claim alleges that Rowling borrowed ideas from the previously unknown book The Adventures of Willy the Wizard. Bloomsbury dismissed the allegations as "unfounded, unsubstantiated and untrue" back in June.

In a statement released through her publicist, Rowling said she had never heard of the author or the book before an initial approach was made in 2004, and had "certainly never read the book". (to read more about this, click here.)

So - have any of you read The Adventures of Willy the Wizard? Heard of it? Makes me want to track down a copy just to see for myself...

2 comments:

Rebecca said...

I think this is an interesting post. I haven't read The Adventures of Willy the Wizard but sometimes I wonder if people accuse popular books such as Harry Potter for plagiarism just so that their book gets put out there in the public eye.

Bookgeek said...

I've been thinking that too. After all, who had heard of Adrian Jacobs or Willy the Wizard beforehand?