Stendhal (born Marie Henri Beyle), the great French author of The Red and the Black, once wrote a book entitled The Lives of Haydn, Mozart, and Metastasio under the pseudonym ‘Bombet’. It later emerged that he had ‘borrowed’ material from two biographies and a eulogy. Far from owning up, Stendhal mounted a vigorous defence of the integrity of the work, writing numerous letters to the press signed ‘Bombet Junior’.
Plagiarism is nothing new...
