The Benford Plagiarism Dossier 12

Begin forwarded message:

From: Alex Keegan
Subject: Fwd: My list - Re Joanne Benford
Date: 14 June 2012 14:54:35 GMT+01:00
To: jack.

More stuff, Jack, just received




Begin forwarded message:

From: vade.
Subject: My list - Re Joanne Benford
Date: 14 June 2012 14:45:42 GMT+01:00
To: Snowball

Alex,

Thanks for that. Here's the list of my findings to which I've added the Prine poem. I count twelve instances of wholesale copy and pasting. Not the odd sentence, but complete poems, short stories, and academic articles or sections thereof.

Regarding Holiday Memory: it was originally broadcast on BBC Wales as a story on 25 October 1946, and then published in The Listener on 7 November 1946. It's a short story and was never originally published as a whole book. What Joanne Benford has done, and what many legitimate authors are now doing, is sell selected short stories or chapters as a short, standalone ebook to entice readers to buy more of their work. Of course she chose at least two very good stories to do this with, yours and Thomas's. However, The Lord of the Rushie River (see below) was originally published as a whole book with illustrations

She is, no doubt, a serial plagiarist and over many years has taken stories, poems, pictures and articles from various sources  - academic journals, books, ebooks, and online amateur archives and websites. The status of her PhD is also to be questioned - I wonder how much of that was plagiarised. Did Sunderland University have Turnitin back when she graduated?

I'm convinced that I would find many more examples if time, and my Google-fu, allowed

Personally, I think she will continue to steal until challenged by people she has in her social and professional(!) circle, unless she chooses to socially isolate herself and does as much as possible to prevent discovery, like not turn up to professional meetings where other people might start to take an interest in her work. (I think this is one reason she is a home tutor.) On this score, I plan to contact OU and Dylan Thomas's estate later today. As someone who has worked in academia and respects the idea of what writing is about, I find people like Joanne Benford extremely galling.

Best wishes

Matthew

PS Just received your email before sending you this email. I'll cross reference to see if there are any missing, but here's my list so far.


In 'Down By the Water'

The poem Carp is 'Koi' by the well known poet John Burnside from 'The Light Trap' (2002) http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Light-Trap-Cape-Poetry/dp/0224061771. Here's an academic article examining the very poem (see part III http://www.erudit.org/revue/ravon/2008/v/n51/019263ar.html

The Lord of the Rushie River is by Cicely Mary Barker http://www.amazon.co.uk/Lord-Rushie-River-Simon-Swan/dp/0723239800/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpt_2

Holiday Memory (which was also available as a stand alone e-book which now appears to have been removed) is by Dylan Thomas.

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In 'Coming Up for Air'

Postcards From BalloonLand is by Alex Keegan http://alexkeegan.blogspot.co.uk/ (This was also a standalone ebook, but appears to have been removed in the last couple of days, along with the Holiday Memory.)

Death's Naked Beauty is by William Prine https://groups.google.com/group/alt.prose/tree/browse_frm/month/1990-08?_done=%2Fgroup%2Falt.prose%2Fbrowse_frm%2Fmonth%2F1990-08%3F&

Powers of the Air is by J D Beresford
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=pPXGHebQG4AC&pg=PA117&dq=Powers+of+the+air+beresford&hl=en&sa=X&ei=8hzZT_zCMo6R0QWX6ZWYBA&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false

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In 'Scorched Earth'

Farmer of the Night is by James A Collins http://moon.ouhsc.edu/jcollins/Saturn/farmer.html

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Cafe Ultima is a copy of 'Cafe Ultimate' from the publication AKCT http://www.autotranscend.co.uk/akct_ind.htm. The publisher John Eden, who writes at http://www.uncarved.org/blog/, has informed me that Joanne Benford was not the author.

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The Music of the Spheres is copied from The Rite of Jupiter by Aleister Crowley http://hermetic.com/waddell/jupiter.html


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Sing of the City Electric has a large chunk taken from Peter Wollen, “Delirious projections”, Sight and Sound, Vol 2 No 4 (August 1992).

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Feminist Film Theory and Female Spectatorship is copied from 'Building the feminine: feminist film theory and female spectatorship' by Gillian Swanson http://wwwmcc.murdoch.edu.au/ReadingRoom/4.2/Swanson.html

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Living Doll: The Seduction of the Cyborg copies whole sections from Of Aids, Cyborgs, and Other Indiscretions: Resurfacing The Body in the Postmodern by Allison Fraiberg (Postmodern Culture v.1.n3 (May 1991) where Joanne Benford appears to have edited out all the parts relating to AIDS. http://pmc.iath.virginia.edu/text-only/issue.591/fraiberg.591