It’s important to remember that Stegner had permission to use the material and that he acknowledged its use, sort of. Whether Stegner was guilty of plagiarism and slander, as his harshest critics maintain, the complexity of the act has never been completely explored. Stegner was responsible for a Foote boomlet by teaching her stories in his literature courses at Stanford University and including them in two anthologies of American writers before he inserted her semi-fictional character in his prize-winning novel.Ĭriticism of Stegner’s use of Foote’s material has circulated mainly among academics and some feminists and has gone largely unnoticed by the public, even though a magazine article in this newspaper drew attention to the issue five years ago. Foote was a magazine writer, illustrator and author in the late 19th and early 20th centuries who wrote about the American West and lived in Colorado, Idaho and California. In the process, Stegner brought Foote to the attention of a new generation of readers. He included page-long passages and entire paragraphs unaltered, slightly changed or invented, and borrowed specific details of her life for his most memorable character, Susan Burling Ward. As it happens, Stegner used the private letters of Mary Hallock Foote and additional portions of her unpublished memoir intact, edited or combined with invented material for the basic structure of his narrative. Of course, “Angle of Repose” was a work of fiction - but that doesn’t mean it can’t have been plagiarized.
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