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The plagiarism allegation in English literature from Butler to Sterne

The book assimilates some previous work including a positioning piece in Plagiarism in Early Modern England, ed Kewes (Palgrave, 2003), broken up and revised extensively since; an article on 'Pope and Plagiarism' (MLR 2005) which underpins chapter 5 of the monograph; and an article on the development of the concept of plagiarism in England (English 2007) which underpins the opening chapter. These two articles have been only slightly revised for inclusion as chapters, but the book as a whole contains extensive additional research and new lines of argument developed subsequent to the earlier publications.

Research towards the monograph was conducted over roughly ten years, and involved extensive sampling of primary sources, using a number of research libraries. The later stages of the research benefited from the availability of ECCO. The book is intended to be a thorough reevaluation of received truisms on the subject of literary plagiarism, considering them in the light of a more extensive and considered consultation of primary sources than in previous scholarship on the subject.