1/13/26
There are several different ways to expose a plagiarist, in a stolen work. Just think, for a minute, what a plagiarist is. He (meaning he or she), by definition, is not nearly as good a writer as his victim. He obviously does not have nearly the integrity of his victim. And he does not have the spiritual and philosophical depth of his victim. To the extent he poses as the author of the work, he is an imposter; and as an imposter, he has to come up with a plausible back-story.

But there is another crucial trait, which I think is often overlooked. He does not have nearly the same respect for the work that the original author did. That means he makes sloppy mistakes.

So in practical terms, if we are examining a plagiarized manuscript, we will be looking for signs of each of these distinguishing marks--especially where he sees fit to revise the text.

1) We should be on the lookout for text which conveys a substandard level of morality, empathy, or sensitivity. If the original work was morally powerful, compassionate, or perceptive, we should see substitutions which are morally questionable, expressing a callous, shallow consciousness.

2) Where the original author conveyed spiritual and intuitive understanding, we should see obvious signs of tinkering which distort, or even contradict, that level of understanding.

3) Where the original author's back-story for having written the work is seamlessly integrated into his own life, at a depth and to an extent that the further one looks into it, the deeper it goes, the plagiarist's back-story will be paper thin, and will fall apart under close examination.

4) We should see sloppy mistakes which betray the plagiarist's underlying contempt for the work.

Where Mathew and Abby Whittier's plagiarized works are concerned, when I had only the published book, essay or poem, I had to rely on detective work to isolate this kind of evidence. I was able to do it, but fancy detective work is not so easy to present convincingly to others. The reader has to get into the nuts and bolts with me, and that requires an investment of time and energy. In order for anyone to invest time and energy into anything I've written, they must first respect me. The Catch-22 thus arises, that they don't respect me because they haven't taken the time to immerse themselves in my presentation of the evidence; but they won't take that time until they respect me.

I have caught all of Mathew and Abby Whittier's plagiarists red-handed, and I've written up that evidence in a series of papers. No journal will publish them, and so I do the only thing I can do, which is to post them online. There, they are visited, skimmed, or read by unknown persons who apparently do quietly tell their colleagues, but who never write me. This evidence is strong enough; but you have to be logical and rational to acknowledge its strength. In other words, these pieces of evidence are intrinsically transformative, but the reader has to be so in love with the truth, as to permit himself to be transformed.

And transformation is pain.

However, there is a difference between the "smoking guns" I've found in the published plagiarized works, and the ones I've found most recently in "A Christmas Carol." This time, I have the entire handwritten manuscript. More importantly, I found a way to peer beneath the heavy, deliberate redactions in that manuscript. Now, not only can I see the printed revision, I can see what had been replaced.

That's a very different kettle of fish. There is no need for extrapolation, now. I know exactly what Mathew or Abby originally wrote, and I know exactly what Charles Dickens saw fit to replace it with.

First of all, this is a difference in scale. In, say, the poems which Elizabeth Barrett plagiarized from Mathew Whittier, I can find two or three instances. In Dickens' handwritten manuscript of "A Christmas Carol," I ended up finding over a dozen. But secondly, again, there is no question of where he took it--and his revisions precisely reflect the criteria we started with in this entry. The writing is markedly inferior; he takes something deeply moral and compassionate, and makes of it something amoral (or in at least one instance, even immoral) and callous. He takes something refined and makes it coarse. He takes something with philosophical depth, and makes it trite. ChatGPT, as I was working with it in this project, persisted in calling Dickens' editorial influence on this text, "flattening." Dickens was taking a deeply nuanced text of spiritual and philosphical depth, and turning it into a mere ghost story for mass consumption. I call it "dumbing down," but I don't mean merely in the intellectual sense, or even in terms of writing prowess. I mean spiritually, as well. In every single instance where a revision was made to something sacred, Dickens has rendered it secular. He has added nothing at all of real value to this story; and he has degraded it considerably.

Ironically, the film and play adaptations of "A Christmas Carol" largely leave out Dickens' revisions, and emphasize what's left of Mathew and Abby's original writing. For example, the "Spirit of Christmas Past" is typically portrayed much as Abby had originally envisioned her. The monstrous shape-shifter with long muscular arms, which Dickens tried to change her into, is nowhere to be seen--though the comical (and disrespectful) scene of Scrooge trying to stuff her into her overgrown cap, remains.

Now, recently I posted a paper entitled "How I Discovered Mathew and Abby Whittier's Literary Presence in Charles Dickens' Handwritten Manuscript of A Christmas Carol: an example found after-the-fact." It's precisely what it says it is--relatively minor evidence I discovered after my print-on-demand book was finalized. But it conveniently demonstrates some of these principles. We not only see Dickens leaving in one of Abby's favorite expressions, which is far more plausible for her personal register than his; we see him make a substitution. And in this case, I don't have to extrapolate what had been written before. It's there in black-and-white. So whereas I used to have to devote 10 paragraphs to making the case, here I can dispense with all of that, and get directly to the meaning--what this revision tells us about the original author, and what it tells us about the plagiarist.

One example, two examples, even three examples might not be convincing to the die-hard skeptic. That's what I have for Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Edgar Allan Poe, and Margaret Fuller. But in this manuscript, it's one example after another, so that the pattern is unmistakable. Clearly, this is an ignoramus who has gotten his hands on a work of inspired genius, and who is hurriedly and sloppily despoiling it for quick cash.

My book, again, is "The Sacred Carol: Rediscovering the True Authorship of a Christmas Classic." The banner at the top of this page will get you to the supporting website, and hence to the purchase links. My recent paper can be read here.

Sincerely,

Stephen Sakellarios, M.S.