SOURCE: Saari, Jon. Review of Stolen Words: Forays into the Origins and Ravages of Plagiarism, by Thomas Mallon. Antioch Review 48, no. 2 (spring 1990): 255.

In the following review, Saari evaluates the strengths and weaknesses of Stolen Words: Forays into the Origins and Ravages of Plagiarism, commenting that the work presents “the human drama that accompanies the act of plagiarism.”

Plagiarism is a crime whose punishment is not always clear in Mallon's study [Stolen Words], which turns up some fascinating evidence of what constitutes this crime. Plagiarism, he points out, often has no clear legal context for righting wrongs and doling out justice. Academic departments, professional associations, and university presses move guardedly in questions of plagiarism, preferring discretion to open investigation and indirect solutions to direct confrontation and punishment. Courts want smoking words, not similarities of texts.

Mallon looks at the evidence concerning Laurence Sterne's theft from Burton and Coleridge's borrowings...