SOURCE: Boyd, Herb. “Plagiarism and the Roots Suits.” First World 2, no. 3 (1979): 31-3.

In the following essay, Boyd examines passages in Roots that author Harold Courlander charged were plagiarized from his novel, The African.

Plagiarism is a concept and a practice that can be traced all the way back to Roman law, and while it can be defined in several ways, for our modern sleuths and lawyers it has come to simply mean the act of one author appropriating the writings of another author—in short, literary larceny.

Such esteemed giants of Western literature as Chaucer, Shakespeare, George Bernard Shaw, and even Homer were accused, if not convicted, of extensive “borrowing” from other authors. Extremely successful books like Gone with the Wind, Anthony Adverse, and Rebecca have all had to overcome costly courtroom battles and charges of plagiarism.

Whether it be defined in such pithy anecdotes as “Copying one...