“Claire Harman’s citation rows with Oxford scholar Kathryn Sutherland and Peter Sabor of McGill University demonstrate the bad feeling that can arise when popular writers and academics operate on the same patch. A second complaint against a respected writer has shed further light on the tensions that can emerge when the worlds of academia and popular culture collide. Biographer Claire Harman strongly rejected recent claims made by Kathryn Sutherland, professor of textual criticism at the University of Oxford and her former tutor, that she had failed to credit the academic’s work appropriately in her latest book, Jane’s Fame: How Jane Austen Conquered the World. Professor Sutherland claimed that the debt the book owed to a study she produced in 2005 had not been sufficiently paid, despite Ms Harman pointing out that the work was cited in the text, notes, bibliography and index …” (more)
[Melanie Newman, Times Higher Education, 11 April]