Is someone plagiarizing? The Pocket University 7 September 2023
Hmmm. The entries for September 7 coincidentally cross over from two popular daily readers from the early 20th century. What gives, editors?
Yesterday, we read Walter de la Mare’s poem “The Listeners” as one of a set of poems for the University Library’s Sept. 7 entry.
But, hold on: The Sept. 7 entry in the Pocket University is … de la Mare’s poem “The Listeners.”
Let’s find out what’s going on. That coincidence is too coincidental.
The University Library’s earliest copyright in the front is 1926.1 The editor-in-chief is John Huston Finley, along with executive editor Nella Braddy.
The Pocket University’s earliest copyright in the front is 1884.2 The set’s “Guide to Daily Reading” is edited by William Rose Benet in consultation with Henry Seidel Canby and Christopher Morley.3 Another coincidence? A poem by William Rose Benet appears with de la Mare’s poem in the same day’s entry in the University Library. These editors, librarians, writers and professors are incestuous in their work producing these sets of literary excerpts stretched across a year’s worth of reading!
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