Nancy Stouffer's Claims
Nancy Stouffer, who wrote "The Legend Of RAH And The Muggles," is suing R.K. Rowling, Scolastic Publishing and Warner Brothers, charging that the Harry Potter series are plagerisms of her original work. Warner Brothers and Scolastic have countersued. Stouffer has a website which promotes her side of the argument and I have not seen the argument in detail given by the Harry Potter side, although Rawling claims never to have read Stouffer's work.Having, thus, only been exposed to Stouffer's side of the case, I can still make the following tentative conclusions:
- The number of coincidences in name, especially, are so great as to make it almost impossible to believe that both authors came up with those names independently of each other.
- Harry Potter and Larry Potter
- Lily Potter and Lilly Potter
- Picture of Larry Potter looks so much like Harry
- Neville name used in both
- Muggles a made-up word used in both
- Despite the great number of coincidences, the stories are very different.
- Stouffer's work, based on the introduction which she presents on her website, is not very well written. It's astonishing that she says her work is for 3 to 12 year olds. It looks it would be way over the head of such a young child as a 3-year-old. It's also kind of boring. Not immediately gripping like Harry Potter.
- Stouffer claims to have sold 100,000 copies of her book in one week! I find that extremely hard to believe. If she had, why has nobody heard of her book before? How did 100,000 people find out about this book in one week and why did the publisher later have to declare bankruptcy?
- Fun With Nancy
- Harry Potter? Gladiator? Those were all my ideas by Linwood Barclay, the Toronto Star
- Plagiarise and be Damned by Robert McCrum, Observer
- Muggle vs. Wizard
- Review of Stouffer's book by Deepti Hajela