The history of literature and art is filled with celebrated male geniuses whose names we take fondly even today. But behind many of these figures stood women whose contributions were systematically erased, stolen, or credited to the men they married. In an age when marriage could serve as a convenient cover for plagiarism, countless women writers became the invisible architects of men’s legacies.
Most Notorious Case of Plagiarism: Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald
Perhaps no case is more notorious than F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald. On their honeymoon, Zelda left her journal on her bed, only to return and find several pages missing. Over the years, she suspected Scott took her work and incorporated it. The plagiarism would at times appear word for word, into his novels The Beautiful and the Damned and The Great Gatsby.
Zelda wasn’t silent about the theft. In an interview with The New York Tribune, she stated: “It seems to me that on one page I recognized a portion of an old diary of mine which mysteriously disappeared shortly after my marriage, and, also, scraps of letters which, though considerably edited, sound to me vaguely familiar. In fact, Mr. Fitzgerald—I believe that is how he spells his name—seems to believe that plagiarism begins at home”.
The Great Gatsby’s iconic line about hoping the daughter will be “a beautiful little fool” is strikingly similar to Zelda’s own comment upon their daughter’s birth. When Zelda tried to publish her own novel, Scott forced her to edit out material he wanted for Tender is the Night. He then joined critics in calling her “a third-rate writer” and accusing her of plagiarism, the very crime he had committed against her.
Ghostwriting: Colette and Henry Gauthier-Villars
The French novelist Colette endured perhaps the most brutal exploitation. In 1893, she married Henry Gauthier-Villars, known as “Willy,” who locked her in her room until she produced enough pages to suit him. Financial instability led Willy to recruit his wife as a ghostwriter, telling her to write about her school memories with “piquant details.”
Colette wrote four hugely successful Claudine novels between 1900 and 1903, all published under Willy’s name. When they separated in 1906, Colette had no access to the sizable earnings since the copyright belonged to Willy.
In 1907, Willy sold all rights to the novels without her consent. The same year, France passed a law giving married women control of their earnings. It seemed a bitter irony that came too late.
Colette reclaimed authorship after his death in 1931, but even that victory was temporary. Following her own death in 1954, Willy’s son petitioned to restore his father’s name to the title pages.
Bertolt Brecht’s “Collective”: Elisabeth Hauptmann, Margarete Steffin and Ruth Berlau
The celebrated German playwright built his reputation on “collective” creativity, but this collective was profoundly unequal. Brecht seduced women like Margarete Steffin, promising marriage in exchange for plays he could plagiarize or claim as his own.
John Fuegi’s critical biography presents convincing evidence that the women Brecht dated—particularly Elisabeth Hauptmann, Margarete Steffin and Ruth Berlau—created much of his best-known work. Hauptmann’s own testimony states that she was responsible for much, if not most, of the text of The Threepenny Opera.
Margarete Steffin wrote eight of Brecht’s most well-known plays, including Mother Courage and Her Children and The Caucasian Chalk Circle. This is proven by the fact that the writing style on the original manuscripts matches hers.
She died from tuberculosis at just 33, her contributions unacknowledged. When Steffin died, Brecht fought and won her inheritance from his family, adding financial theft to intellectual theft.
Plagiarism: A Structural Problem
These incidents weren’t simply isolated. Rather, they were enabled by the legal and social structures of the 19th and 20th centuries. In most jurisdictions, married women had no legal right to their own earnings or intellectual property. A husband could legally claim his wife’s work as his own. Publishers and editors routinely refused to work with women writers, or paid them a fraction of what they paid men.
The cultural expectation that women would serve as muses, secretaries, and supporters, but never as creators in their own right, made these thefts seem even justified. When these women did speak out, as Zelda Fitzgerald repeatedly, they were dismissed, ridiculed, or accused of mental instability.
Today, scholars and biographers are working to restore these women’s names to their work. Nancy Milford’s biography of Zelda Fitzgerald became a bestseller and reframed her as a feminist icon. The 2018 film Colette starring Keira Knightley brought her story to wide audiences. Academic research continues to document the extent of contributions by Hauptmann, Steffin, and Berlau to Brecht’s work.
Before AI learned to steal from authors, husbands perfected the art on their wives. The women whose words were taken wrote anyway, their manuscripts disappearing from their desks to reappear under another’s name. Whether or not history has fully corrected these injustices, it can no longer deny they occurred.
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