Cassie Edwards Investigatory Extravaganza II: This Time, it’s Not Dangeresque I

Part of a series: Cassie Edwards 1: The First Post | Cassie Edwards 2: Savage Longings | Cassie Edwards Part 3: Running Fox | Cassie Edwards Part 4: Savage Moon | Cassie Edwards Part 5: Savage Beloved | Follow-up: Penguin (Part 1?) | Official Statement from Signet | AP Article Contains Response from Edwards  | RWA Responds to Allegations  | A centralized document for the Cassie Edwards situation


I was a doof and forgot to include all the tables I needed to in my initial entry about the usage of unattributed material in Cassie Edwards novels. I blame law school for disordering my mind. I suppose it’s a good thing anyway, since the table seems to be fucking up our shizznizzle.

At any rate, here’s more Cassie Edwards tastiness, this time from Savage Longings, published by Leisure Books in 1997, ISBN 0-8439-4176-6. In this particular book, I was only able to find usages from only one source text, The Cheyenne Indians: Their History and Ways of Life by George Bird Grinnell. Excerpts quoted under fair use, etc. etc., and please forgive any typos.

From Page 49 of Savage Longings:

The root digger was a slender, sharp-pointed implement which was used to thrust into the ground to pry out the roots. Each digger was made of ash, the point sharpened and hardened in the fire. There was a knob at one end to protect the hand.

From Page 209 of The Cheyenne Indians:

This work was done with the root-digger (his’ so), a slender, sharp-pointed implement to be thrust into the ground to pry out the roots. In modern times the root-digger has been of iron—any sort of an iron bar. In earlier days, however, these implements were of wood, usually ash, the point sharpened and hardened in the fire. One kind of root-digger was two and one-half to three feet long, and had a knob at one end to protect the hand.


From Page 323 of Savage Longings:

Snow Deer had explained to Charles that it was an old Cheyenne custom for visitors to occupy the lodge of some newly married couple who would then sleep elsewhere. She had told him that this was an honor not only to the owners of the lodge but also to the visitor.

From Page 146 of The Cheyenne Indians:

If visitors came to a village, the old custom was for them to occupy the lodge of some newly married couple, who would give them possession and sleep elsewhere. This was an honor to the visitor.


From page 325 of Savage Longings:

The women who belonged to this society created ceremonial decorations by sewing quills on robes, lodge coverings, and other things made of the skins of animals.

Snow Deer had told Charles that the Cheyenne women considered this work of high importance, and when properly performed, it was quite as much respected as were bravery and success in war among the men.

From Page 159 of The Cheyenne Indians:

Of the women’s associations referred to the most important one was that devoted to the ceremonial decoration, by sewing on quills, of robes, lodge coverings, and other things made of the skins of animals. This work women considered of high importance, and, when properly performed, quite as creditable as were bravery and success in war among the men.


From page 330 of Savage Longings:

The old quiller had then asked Becky to hold her hands out in front of her, palms up and edges together. The old woman bit off a piece of a certain root, chewed it fine, and spat it on Becky’s hand. Becky was then instructed in ceremonial motions, passing her right hand over the outside of her right leg, from ankle to hip, her left hand over her right arm from wrist to shoulder, her left hand over her left leg, from ankle to hip, and her right hand over the left arm, from wrist to shoulder.

Then her hands had been placed on her head and passed backward from the forehead.

From Page 160 of The Cheyenne Indians:

The old woman directed the candidate to hold her hands out in front of her, palms up and edges together. The old woman bit off a piece of a certain root, chewed it fine, and spat on the hands ceremonially, and the candidate made the ceremonial motions, passing the right hand over the from ankle to hip, her left hand over her right arm from wrist to shoulder, her left hand over her left leg from ankle to hip, and her right hand over the left arm from wrist to shoulder. Then the hands were placed on the head, and passed backward from the forehead.


Again, keep in mind that these are passages I’ve managed to find on-line; there were many suspicious passages that I couldn’t find source texts for, simply because Google failed and I can’t be bothered to haul my ass to the library. Are there any bored grad students/librarians in the audience who want to help me play Spot the Source Text? I have several passages marked from various other Edwards novels that I can e-mail you, and I’ll post anything you find (with full attribution, of course).

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  1. But that should be the result, no?

    Sure, but I was just thinking of the people NOT strictly responsible who will be hurt. If she’s got a hundred books out, she’s had lots of editors, many of whom have been replaced since the books were published, etc. I’m saying this will be a huge, painful headache for anyone even peripherally involved and also for those who’ve been unknowingly handed the bag.

    Not saying the shit shouldn’t hit the fan, I’m just sympathetic to those in the downdraft.

  2. Victoria Dahl says:

    Not to mention the hurt caused to the people plagiarised.

  3. Robin says:

    Uhm. I’ve used at least one more or less verbatim quotation from a 19th century guidebook: “The Rhine below COlogne is a most uninteresting river, with high dykes on each side, which protect the flat country from inundations and intercept all view, save of a few villages, church steeples, and farm houses, painted of various colours, which are seen peering above them” from Murray’s Hand-Book—Northern Germany of 1845, became “… and she enthused all the way from Rotterdam to Cologne when high dykes on each side of the river had intercepted all view, except for a few church steeples which had shyly peered over them.”

    What follows then is an extremely condensed version of one of the Rhinish panoramas in Anna Seghers’s The Seventh Cross, which I intended as a sort of personal homage to the author. But since it strongly echoes some of Seghers’s phrases, somebody else might argue I stole them from her book.

    Perhaps because I’ve been doubly trained to cite (law is even worse than literature in this regard), I’d probably have expected some attribution for the Seghers’s and a rephrasing the guidebook or at least attribution.  But again, I think it might be worth parsing out what any of us think is the appropriate use of secondary sources.  The guidebook, especially, is a grayer area, IMO, than the sources pointed out in reference to Edwards.  Not that I’m right and you’re wrong, of course; just my opinion about where I’d draw the baseline.  I obviously thought it was more neutral than it is.

  4. an says:

    “I guess I’d draw the line somewhat like this:  I don’t think an author needs to attribute when she uses facts, dates, modes of dress or food or other aspects of daily life, historical events, common ideas of the day, or other cultural artifacts.”

    aka common knowledge.

    ”  But if, for example, she wants to write a novel based on a controversial historical thesis, for example, written by a particular scholar, I think that deserves attribution. “

    not common knowledge.

  5. Robin says:

    I need to think a lot more about this, but I think the common knowledge test is pretty good, especially if you contrast it with what I would term “creative knowledge.”  That is, does the secondary research contain any element of originality or creativity in content or presentation?  Those elements of creative knowledge are not, IMO, fodder for transcription into fictional work, at least not without specific attribution. 

    And maybe the test could be even simpler:  if someone copied a sentence from my work into theirs without attribution, would I feel violated or be uncomfortable?  If the answer is yes, then I’d say that’s a pretty good indication that the author of that source might feel the same way. 

    Can and does unintentional plagiarism take place?  Oh, yeah, and it’s something every writing community—fiction, non-fiction, academic—struggles with.  It’s why, IMO, we shouldn’t string people up or throw around accusations lightly, and why some folks can recover from discovered acts of plagiarism, especially if the mass of their work is original and significant. 

    I don’t see plagiarism in and of itself as a moral failing at all, although when someone intentionally copies I think the analysis shifts.  In this case, it’s not clear what happened, only that quite a few similarities were discovered with almost no time or effort by a few readers.  And the fact that it’s so often readers who do find this stuff IMO makes this a topic of equal interest to readers and authors.

  6. Melissa Blue says:

    Did Cassie Edwards run over your dog?

    I doubt it, but writing a crappy book and having paid money for said crappy book is just as bad as running over someone’s beloved pet.

    In a way I understand where this comment is coming from (JCs). Cassie Edwards hasn’t been spared on this site.

    Lets look at it this way if an author they lurved had done the same thing I’m sure they would have been just as many post supporting alleged accusation of plagerism. As I’m also sure they would have been a WHOLE lot more snark involved. Nothing worse than an author who you lurve betraying your belief in their writing.

  7. “I guess I’d draw the line somewhat like this:  I don’t think an author needs to attribute when she uses facts, dates, modes of dress or food or other aspects of daily life, historical events, common ideas of the day, or other cultural artifacts.”

    aka common knowledge.

    This sounds pretty in theory, but it doesn’t quite work this way when you’re actually writing a novel. Aspects of daily life are common knowledge? Do you know how many books on aspects of daily life a writer of historical fiction usually owns? If I think of the many mistakes I’ve seen in romance in regard to the wearing of stays / corsets alone … Do you know what the interior of White’s looked like? What would you say if somebody uses a watercloset in the Regency era?

    Same goes for historical events: you might know all the dates of the important battles of the Napoleonic Wars, but if you want to set a story in these wars, with your hero running around and about the battlefields of Europe, your research will necessary go beyond the bare dates and you will have to read about the daily life of the soldiers, to read detailed descriptions of the different battles, etc.

    I’d probably have expected some attribution for the Seghers’s

    But this is intertextuality. Look at Pratchett’s Witches Abroad, in which the three witches travel through different stories, among them The Wizard of Oz: it gets windy, there’s a yellow brickroad, a farmhouse drops on Nanny Ogg’s head, and afterwards there are lots of dwarfs dancing around the house and singing a ding-dong song (And they want her red boots, too!). Should he have attributed this passage to the film?

  8. Jules Jones says:

    The difference between intertextuality and plagiarism is that the sort of thing Pratchett is doing assumes that the reader will recognise that it’s a reference to another source. It’s not formally attributed, but the whole point of it is reader recognition of the allusion.

    With intertextuality, the author is hoping that the reader will notice what’s going on. With plagiarism, the author is hoping that the reader *won’t* notice what’s going on (or simply doesn’t care if the reader notices).

    It can be hazy, and difficult to pin down exactly what was in an author’s mind. But I think in the Edwards material covered in this series of posts, there’s no excuse for not having at least an acknowledgements page or bibliography. The sources she used aren’t ones that her audience could be expected to be familiar with, and it’s word for word rather than reworked.

  9. Charlene says:

    I don’t see plagiarism in and of itself as a moral failing at all

    Not perhaps a moral failing per se, but certainly a moral issue. Plagiarism can easily exist without there being a legal issue – copying Cato the Censor is still plagiarism.

  10. Jules, as I said, I wasn’t talking specifically about Cassie Edwards—most of these examples are clearly copy and paste—, but I was talking / wondering about what should or should not be attributed in more general terms.

  11. Jules Jones says:

    Sandra, I’d say that one test as an author is—do you intend the reader to recognise the source? The example text you quote from the guidebook is getting a bit iffy, in my opinion. Your version is too close to the original for comfort, and if there was a lot of that without attribution I wouldn’t look kindly on it were someone to pick up on it. But it wouldn’t take much more rewording to use it safely.

    The Sehgers homage—how likely would your readership be to pick up on it being a homage? If most of them would, you might want to cover yourself with an attribution, but it wouldn’t be unreasonable to use it. But if you use it in a context where much of your readership is unlikely to recognise both the source and that you intend them to recognise it, you’re on dodgy ground unless you make explicit acknowledgement of it somewhere.

    (I should point out that my day job is science, so I’m having the same academic-type “cite your sources, plagiarism *bad*” reaction to this that some of the other commentators are, and my standards for citation are biased by that.)

  12. Robin says:

    Not perhaps a moral failing per se, but certainly a moral issue.

    To me it’s an ethical issue, and the difference is significant in my mind because so often morality seems to be associated with religiosity and black/white bad/good, while ethics have more to do with community standards of right and wrong.  Since plagiarism hasn’t always been seen as a wrong, it does have its foundation in the community.  But in any case, we may only be talking about semantics here, yes?  In any case, it’s definitely something of great importance to discuss in a community based around writing.

  13. Robin says:

    But this is intertextuality. Look at Pratchett’s Witches Abroad, in which the three witches travel through different stories, among them The Wizard of Oz: it gets windy, there’s a yellow brickroad, a farmhouse drops on Nanny Ogg’s head, and afterwards there are lots of dwarfs dancing around the house and singing a ding-dong song (And they want her red boots, too!). Should he have attributed this passage to the film?

    Jules Jones has said much of what I would have said if I had seen this sooner, Sandra, but I guess what I would add is the question of how obvious the reference is to your audience.  I, for example, wouldn’t necessarily know The Seventh Cross right off the bat, but I’d know a Wizard of Oz reference (sad, I know, but there it is). 

    Also, this was the sentence that caught my attention in your initial post:  But since it strongly echoes some of Seghers’s phrases, somebody else might argue I stole them from her book.  Whenever it comes to language, or at least language beyond almost universally recognizable bytes, I say go for some sort of referencing, even if it’s only an author’s note explaining the homage.  Obviously it’s a judgment call, Sandra, and I think we’re clearly in a gray zone (I have such a weakness for paradox, lol), but when it comes to using language, I think it can be a real close call.  JMO, of course.

  14. Robin says:

    Oh, one more thing I wanted to say about the issue of “common knowledge.”  To me—in this context—the common refers more to “of the community/commons” than to that of being well known today by everyone.  Historical elements of times past are community property in that they are born of and possessed by the community.  But creative knowledge is at least born of an individual within the community, and I think we have to share in that knowledge a bit differently.  I don’t know if that distinction makes sense, but it’s the only way I can think of to articulate the difference I see.

  15. PocketFox says:

    Is it bad that I look at the title of this novel and I keep reading “Savage Longjohns”? <.<

    That’s… really my only contribution, since everyone else has already said my thoughts. X3

  16. Ros says:

    It’s my understanding that copyright refers not to information or ideas but to their expression.  Usually when you’re writing you do research to get the information and ideas, then you express these in your own way.  That’s not plagiarism.  But simply copying chunks of text word for word as you’ve shown quite clearly is plagiarism.

    My tutors taught us that 5 consecutive words was a good rule of thumb to identify plagiarism (though if you had a particular professor you should limit that to 4).  Of course it’s not hard and fast.  Sometimes individual words or very short phrases are distinctive enough to require acknowledgement.  In other cases, expression is generic enough not to be attributable.  But the repeated use of lengthy verbatim quotes you’ve shown is unquestionable and unacceptable.

    And yes, plagiarism charges will cause lengthy and expensive lawsuits.  But, you know, if you don’t use the law, it’s not worth having.  And in this case the law quite clearly protects the work of the little people.  I think it’s great that someone’s standing up for them.

  17. Nanna says:

    How convenient. I have a final on plagiarism and copyright infringement tomorrow (and so I really should be studying and not reading this, but what can you do).
    To me, this seems like a blatant case (blatant cases) of plagiarism, and more seriously, copyright infringement.
    Plagiarism is bad, to be sure, but it’s not a legally punishable crime. The only punishment open for plagiarism is tar and feathers, being shunned by her peers etc.
    I think she’s left herself wide open for copyright lawsuits. I mean, she didn’t even try to cover her tracks by using a friggin’ thesaurus (which would still be plagiarism, but it’d be a lot less noticeable). 
    I hope she doesn’t play the old “I researched and made notes, but I conveniently forgot to note that they were notes, so I thought they were my own ideas and yeah… please believe me?”-card.

  18. Ros says:

    I hope she doesn’t play the old “I researched and made notes, but I conveniently forgot to note that they were notes, so I thought they were my own ideas and yeah… please believe me?”-card.

    Even if she does, it’s no defence.  It’s her responsibility to make sure she didn’t steal someone else’s work, even by accident.

  19. DebL says:

    I’m going to weigh in way too late (as usual). But I wanted to pick up on something Robin said, about how she is sensitive to proper attribution as an academic, and even more so as a lawyer… I’m paraphrasing, because I’m too lazy to scroll up. (Ironic, no, since we’ve been talking like the lazy thing is to NOT paraphrase?)

    I’m a 3rd year law student, and yeah, proper citation has never seemed so important. Or so tedious. I want to do something really violent to my copy of The McGill Guide to Uniform Legal Citation. But I’m not careful because I’m afraid of the Big P. I wouldn’t steal. I’m just afraid of being wrong, so I go back to my source an nail down the exact paragraph, statute, line in Hansard, whatever.

    When I’m working on Regency-era novel writing projects, I’m doing something very different and I’m not afraid of being wrong. You can beef your book up with all the facts in the library and/or Internet, but some of them are simply inaccurate, impossibly bereft of context, tainted by changes in langauge (“lovemaking” anybody), and seen through a modern lens (or, if you’re using late-19th c. English sources, seen through a Victorian lens).

    Never mind how boring that is. That, by the way, is what struck me about the Cassie Edwards excerpts.

    I’m also just plain making stuff up where the historical record has a gap, and hoping I’m clever enough to fool an attentive reader. It’s fiction. And the fact, for me, are part of world-building. I want to do a good job of it, but the last thing I would do is put a footnote at the bottom of the page to remind the reader that I did my research (lazy?). I want the reader to forget, so far as possible, that I wasn’t THERE (in a God-like omniscient third person kind of way). The second-last thing I would do is lift a passage out of a source and plunk it down in my narrative (lazy).

    I DO forget my sources (lazy again). All I remember when I’m making my notes is where I’m going to use a “fact” in a story, how it’s going to work in the plot or fill out a character.

    What I think of CE’s work is that it’s just bad craft. But it’s not like she is… oh, trying to mislead a Court about a legal authority. I’m not saying plagiarism is always a victimless, er, no-no.

  20. RfP says:

    From the many examples here, the Cassie Edwards copying appears to be pretty extreme. But it’s tricky extrapolating that to general statements of morality and ethics in writing fiction. I think Sandra Schwab points out an important dimension to writing, particularly in historical fiction. There’s a well-established space between intertextuality and plagiarism. There’s a long tradition of using a previous writer’s (thinker’s, etc) words, often without attribution. This can be done in homage or to add historicity (e.g. a fictional soldier speaks words from an historical soldier’s diary), and it’s not necessary that the entire audience get the reference. Those who do are expected to smile in recognition, not judge it as plagiarism.

    To pick a romance-related example of homage, think how many books use the phrase:
    “It is a truth universally acknowledged”
    (but without the quotes)

    and continue with some variation on:
    “…that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife”

    That’s a gross oversimplification because it’s such an obvious homage to P&P.  But the reference isn’t clear to every reader, so perhaps it does make my point after all.

    Again, I’m not at all excusing plagiarism.  But historical fiction is an odd space that has often relied extensively on unattributed sources—and been praised for it, rather than condemned.  So I can’t say I know how to declare a hard line between authenticity and theft of intellectual property.

  21. Robin says:

    Again, I’m not at all excusing plagiarism.  But historical fiction is an odd space that has often relied extensively on unattributed sources—and been praised for it, rather than condemned.  So I can’t say I know how to declare a hard line between authenticity and theft of intellectual property.

    But look at the Ian McEwan Atonement controversy.  How was that not intertextuality but what Sandra’s talking about is (not necessarily saying you’d make that same distinction, just positing it for the sake of the question)?  And he even offered some form of attribution.

  22. Sandra, but I guess what I would add is the question of how obvious the reference is to your audience.  I, for example, wouldn’t necessarily know The Seventh Cross right off the bat, but I’d know a Wizard of Oz reference (sad, I know, but there it is).

    Granted, I didn’t expect that most readers would pick up the Seghers reference, but the person for whose amusement it was intended (my German professor, as whose student assistant I did all the tedious work for the new critical edition of The Seventh Cross) did pick it up.

    The Wizard of Oz passage in Pratchett is a rather obvious intertextual reference and no doubt most British and American readers will pick it up. But I doubt that most people will recognize the parody of Tom Brown’s School Days in Pyramids. And before the release of the Beowulf film, most readers wouldn’t have caught the Beowulf references in either Pratchett’s Guards! Guards! or in Tolkien’s The Hobbit, would they?

    But look at the Ian McEwan Atonement controversy. How was that not intertextuality . . .

    Well, first of all, that was not fictional text to fictional text. And secondly, most of the controversy stemmed from the fact that he had used an autobiography for research and based relatively large parts of his novel on somebody else’s life. And that person wasn’t dead yet when he wrote the novel. So it would have been only polite to stress this point more strongly in the author’s note or acknowledgments or whatever else he included in his book.

    I don’t think there would have been such a controversy if he had written a novel about a 19th-century courtesan and used Harriet Wilson’s memoirs.

  23. I should perhaps add that quite a number of references in my novels are strictly for my own amusement. I mean, not in a hundred years would anybody recognize a character calling his wife the “Doodlechick” as a reference to a character from a German children’s novel. 🙂

  24. lamardeuse says:

    Did Cassie Edwards run over your dog?

    Wow, so the only reason women might be interested in bringing a plagiarist’s crimes to light is because they have some personal, emotional grudge against the author? If this were written by a man, I’d say this statement was misogynist.

  25. Ruby says:

    The guy is Dangeresque, DangerESQUE! The mighty oak has fallen. If moooovies have taught me anything, he’ll get the giiiiiirl… OR MAYBE NOT! Dun nuh, dun nuh. Stick to the man! Stick it to the man! Dun nuh, dun nuh. Cool glasses, cool glasses. Stick it to the man! Stick it to the man! Cool cool glasses.

    Ahem. That’s all have to contribute.

  26. Robin says:

    The Wizard of Oz passage in Pratchett is a rather obvious intertextual reference and no doubt most British and American readers will pick it up. But I doubt that most people will recognize the parody of Tom Brown’s School Days in Pyramids. And before the release of the Beowulf film, most readers wouldn’t have caught the Beowulf references in either Pratchett’s Guards! Guards! or in Tolkien’s The Hobbit, would they?

    Whether or not the average reader would catch a Beowulf reference, Beowulf is a foundational text in Western society (of course I had to slog through it in Anglo-Saxon, so I might be a bit biased here). 

    In any case, as a literary critic, I adore intertextuality, but as you know because you do it, it’s quite a sophisticated thing and requires deep understanding of the texts alluded to. 

    I had been trying to put together an informal list of fiction authors who provide some sort of referencing even when they’re doing intertextual writing, but Meezergrrrl found one online and posted a link in the Signet response thread (Pratchett’s on it, btw).  Anyway, I’m not suggesting that every authors who writes intertextually needs to be providing footnotes and biblios.  But OTOH, I can see readers who aren’t used to reading texts like that being confused or even thinking that something has been lifted, especially if the text doing the alluding doesn’t itself appear to be very original or transformative.  Because that’s a big part of intertextuality, too, the transformation of those other texts as they are woven through another author’s voice.

    Mostly, though, I wonder how many people are even familiar with intertextuality, since I’ve seen some comments from both authors and readers suggesting that what Edwards was doing is intertextual.  So while I agree with you in the main, I can also say as a reader that I can see instances where I’m not convinced that something is being used to create that intertextual conversation (at the very least it requires, IMO, a relationship of trust with the author and that may need to be built up over the course of several books).  Like what about that Eppie-nominated book that was basically Jane Eyre in m/m form.  Is there, for example, a difference between homage and intertextual conversation? Adaptation and homage?

    Also, to return to the McEwan thing, I think it’s kind of telling that many lit fic authors didn’t seem to think it was a big deal, while Romance folks did.  I don’t know where that difference comes from, but IMO it adds another shade of gray to all this.

  27. RfP says:

    Sandra Schwab beat me to it on the McEwan flap.  So I’ll skip over to this aspect:

    Also, to return to the McEwan thing, I think it’s kind of telling that many lit fic authors didn’t seem to think it was a big deal, while Romance folks did.  I don’t know where that difference comes from, but IMO it adds another shade of gray to all this.

    And many lit fic authors didn’t seem to think James Frey’s fictionalized autobiography was a big deal, while Oprah viewers did.

    Ergo, Cassie Edwards’ novels are experiments in lit fic.

    Couldn’t resist. 😛
    Actually I have some thoughts on why we see that genre gap in expectations—but suffice it to say, there are a lot of different viewpoints out there.  Often I try novels that are recommended as fascinatingly referential and layered, and I might feel they’re not so much intertextual as just repeating tropes from other books.  Hard to say where to slice it.

  28. Rachelle says:

    Wow, its kind of pathetic that she copied the entries in those Cheyenne Indians books, and THOSE still turned out more interesting.

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