Interesting history, but this article's argument hinges on the assumption that there is an obligation for authors to acknowledge and praise their predecessors i

Interesting history, but this article's argument hinges on the assumption that there is an obligation for authors to acknowledge and praise their predecessors in a particular genre, and that failing to do so is somehow dastardly. I don't agree. I had never heard of the Porter sisters, but I just went and sampled some of their work on Project Gutenberg, and I suspect the main reason that they are forgotten is that their books are melodramatic and not especially well-written. A taste: > How often, as a cloud obscured for an instant the moon's light, and threw a transitory shade across the path, did her heart bound with the thought that her watching was at an end! It was he whom she had seen start from the abrupt rock! They were the folds of his tartan that darkened the white cliff! But the moon again rolled through her train of clouds and threw her light around. Where then was her Wallace? Alas! it was only a shadow she had seen! the hill was still lonely, and he whom she sought was yet far away! Overcome with watching, expectation, and disappointment, unable to say whence arose her fears, she sat down again to look; but her eyes were blinded with tears, and in a voice interrupted by sighs she exclaimed, "Not yet, not yet! Ah, my Wallace, what evil hath betided thee?" [0] The author may take comfort from the fact that Scott's work has also fallen dramatically in popularity and is probably unknown even to most well-read people these days. [0]: https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/6086/pg6086.html https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/6086/pg6086.html