Agence France-Presse:

A string of publishers failed to spot blatant plagiarism of one of English literature’s most famous authors, in a cheeky test to see if she would have secured a book deal today, a report said Thursday.

David Lassman, head of the Jane Austen Festival in Bath, sent manuscripts to 18 editors seeking a publishing contract, using only slightly disguised versions of chapters from the iconic novelist’s most famous works.

But only one publisher spotted the fakes, which included perhaps the most famous line in all English literature, the opening sentence of her 1813 work “Pride and Prejudice”.

“I was staggered. Here is one of the greatest writers that has lived, with her oeuvre securely fixed in the English canon and yet only one recipient recognised them as Austen’s work,” Lassman told The Guardian newspaper…

In contrast, even as someone who has actually read Ms Austen, and likes her, I’m neither staggered nor surprised.  For precisely because her oeuvre (when we see such use of French, we know intellectual trouble awaits) is now “securely fixed in the English canon“, it is therefore probably far more familiar and perhaps generally praised thanks mostly to the impact of films . . .

. . . and television . . .

. . . than it is routinely widely read for pleasure.  For remember, her “oeuvre” is now some 200 years old.  “The English canon” observation is especially unintentionally telling; essentially, Ms Austen is now a more accessible, easy to digest Shakespeare.  For although she undoubtedly has greater casual reading appeal than he (and his were plays of course, not novels), lacking the need to do so for a classroom assignment, how many people, including publishers, regularly curl up with “Julius Caesar“? 

Yes, while one publisher clearly familiar with Ms Austen apparently read the manuscript closely enough to spot the plagiarism, most of the others probably didn’t give it much of an in-depth look.  If they had, they might also have spotted the plagiarism.  But, then again, given that Ms Austen’s work is now not read daily nearly as much as Mr Lassman is seemingly convinced is the case, maybe not. 

They don’t want to admit it, but chances are even an Austen-fanatic at one of those publishers who missed the plagiarism might well have overlooked such simply because he/she almost certainly cannot generally fixate on the source or utter brilliance of any given line.  In fact, it would probably have been amazing if any reader at each had even read that line.  One published writer I know once told me that most publishers do not give a book submitted on spec by a previously unpublished author more than a brief thumb through.  Often, they choose a few pages at random and give those a read to see if they are “gripped”, in order to see if it is worth the time having a deeper read.  If they aren’t immediately “gripped”, the manuscript usually goes into the “courteous, but no” pile. 

Indeed, let us also not forget that, before she was as globally famous as she is today, as Pemberley.com reminds us:

…First Impressions/Pride and Prejudice was offered to a publisher by Jane Austen’s father, but the publisher declined to even look at the manuscript…

In short, Mr Lassman needed at least an agent of his own, not J.K. Rowling’s.  (…Harry Potter author J. K. Rowling’s agents Christopher Little said they were “not confident” of being able to place the work…)  That’s because publishers (and high-powered agents) get so many unsolicited manuscripts they simply don’t have the time to try to unearth some undiscovered, “unrepresented, unpublished genius”.  And that means that, unfortunately for budding authors, most publishers’ necessary business approach revolves around the assumption that someone unrepresented probably isn’t producing a product that is worth spending an inordinate amount of time focusing upon.  One can rationally appreciate why that is so.  Most publishers, after all, aren’t arthouse charities.  They need to make money . . . to stay in business.  
 
Secondly, as most of us know, literature has moved on a great deal since the early 1800s.  That publishers today are not exactly falling all over themselves to offer a paying contract to a writer with a 200 year old style hardly seems damning to the publishers themselves.  In fact, it should have been first-class shocking if such writing had garnered a contract.  Why?  Well, for example, U.S. presidents no longer construct sentences in the manner of Thomas Jefferson either . . .

…The approbation implied by your suffrage is a great consolation to me for the past, and my future solicitude will be to retain the good opinion of those who have bestowed it in advance, to conciliate that of others by doing them all the good in my power, and to be instrumental to the happiness and freedom of all…

. . . for while the likes of that undoubtedly sounded and read magnificently in 1801, it would most probably have been received rather differently by listeners and readers in 2001.  (Please, no jokes in the comments about the current president’s being less than a Jeffersonian wordsmith.)  Ms Austen suffers (if that is the right word?) today from much the same “problem”.

From Mr Lassman’s “Austen-centered” perspective, clearly his was a cutsy publicity stunt.  In comparison, for the overworked first readers in the publishing houses he pranked, this is just one more annoyance they didn’t need while daily struggling to earn livings.  Perhaps he too would like them in turn now to bury him with nonsense of their choosings “to prove” some lit obsession of theirs?  For instance, how’s his Lawrence Sterne, line-by-line? 

So in real terms, as we have seen, his stunt is not particularly revealing in the sense in which Mr Lassman and quite a few others apparently believe it to be.  Inadvertently, he has merely proven other things outside that which he had obviously initially intended.  “Seldom, very seldom,” as Mr Lassman is undoubtedly aware, “does complete truth belong to any human disclosure; seldom can it happen that something is not a little disguised, or a little mistaken.”