Dickens Meets Dostoevsky<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The TLS recently republished a delightful piece of literary detective work by Eric Naiman, first published in 2013. In 2002, one Stephanie Harvey\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/2016\/07\/dickens-meets-dostoevsky\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Dickens Meets Dostoevsky\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The TLS recently republished a delightful piece of literary detective work by Eric Naiman, first published in 2013. 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{"id":18242,"date":"2016-07-29T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2016-07-29T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/leithart.level2d.com\/?p=18"},"modified":"2016-07-29T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2016-07-29T00:00:00","slug":"dickens-meets-dostoevsky","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/2016\/07\/dickens-meets-dostoevsky\/","title":{"rendered":"Dickens Meets Dostoevsky"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

T<\/span>he TLS recently republished<\/a> a delightful piece of literary detective work by Eric Naiman, first published in 2013. In 2002, one Stephanie Harvey published a piece in the Dickensian describing an encounter between Dickens and Dostoevsky. It\u2019s a hoax. There is no real evidence for the meeting, but Naiman is more interested in unmasking the obscure scholar who invented the incident.<\/p>\n

He argues that Stephanie Harvey is actually independent historian AD Harvey, and presents evidence that the latter has published under a number of other pseudonyms: Graham Headley, Trevor McGovern, John Schellenberger, Leo Bellingham, Michael Lindsay and Ludovico Parra. He wonders if there are more members of this tight-knit \u201ccircle of friends.\u201d <\/p>\n

These fictional scholars and writers cite one another, plagiarize from each other, review each other\u2019s books, sometimes attack one another. In one essay, Graham Headley attacks the \u201cHarvey Thesis\u201d attributed to AD Harvey. Naiman explains the vertigo-inducing scenario: \u201cif Graham Headley is one of Harvey\u2019s projections, we are faced with the astonishing case of a scholar attacking his own book, in part, one supposes, to supplement it with new discoveries, since it is unlikely that a second edition would ever be forthcoming, but, more probably, to draw attention to it. \u2018The Harvey Thesis,\u2019 after all, sounds grand, even if it isn\u2019t clear what the thesis is and even if the review\u2019s author is dismissive of Harvey\u2019s methodology.\u201d<\/p>\n

Naiman understands the temptation behind Harvey\u2019s charade: \u201cCharitably, we can see the practice of reviewing one\u2019s own works as a kind of knowing critique of the insider trading that can occur among authors and reviewers. Why bother to solicit reviews for your books when you can write them yourself? . . . One spends years on a monograph and then waits a few more years for someone to write about it. How much lonelier the life of an independent scholar, who does not have regular contact, aggravating as that can sometimes be, with colleagues. Attacking one\u2019s own book can be seen as an understandable response to an at times intolerable isolation. How comforting to construct a community of scholars who can analyse, supplement and occasionally even ruthlessly criticize each other\u2019s work.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"