George Orwell Got a B- at Harvard, When Michael Crichton Submitted an Orwell Essay as His Own

Images via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

In his 2002 mem­oir, Trav­els, Michael Crich­ton took his read­ers back sev­er­al decades, to the ear­ly 1960s when, as a Har­vard stu­dent, he tried an inter­est­ing lit­tle exper­i­ment in his Eng­lish class. He recalled:

I had gone to col­lege plan­ning to become a writer, but ear­ly on a sci­en­tif­ic ten­den­cy appeared. In the Eng­lish depart­ment at Har­vard, my writ­ing style was severe­ly crit­i­cized and I was receiv­ing grades of C or C+ on my papers. At eigh­teen, I was vain about my writ­ing and felt it was Har­vard, and not I, that was in error, so I decid­ed to make an exper­i­ment. The next assign­ment was a paper on Gul­liv­er’s Trav­els, and I remem­bered an essay by George Orwell that might fit. With some hes­i­ta­tion, I retyped Orwell’s essay and sub­mit­ted it as my own. I hes­i­tat­ed because if I were caught for pla­gia­rism I would be expelled; but I was pret­ty sure that my instruc­tor was not only wrong about writ­ing styles, but poor­ly read as well. In any case, George Orwell got a B- at Har­vard, which con­vinced me that the Eng­lish depart­ment was too dif­fi­cult for me.

I decid­ed to study anthro­pol­o­gy instead. But I doubt­ed my desire to con­tin­ue as a grad­u­ate stu­dent in anthro­pol­o­gy, so I began tak­ing premed cours­es, just in case.

Most like­ly Crich­ton sub­mit­ted Orwell’s essay 1946 essay, “Pol­i­tics vs. Lit­er­a­ture: An Exam­i­na­tion of Gul­liv­er’s Trav­els.”  He even­tu­al­ly went to Har­vard Med­ical School but kept writ­ing on the side. Per­haps get­ting a grade just a shade below Orwell’s B- gave Crich­ton some bizarre con­fir­ma­tion that he could one day make it as a writer.

Fol­low Open Cul­ture on Face­book and Twit­ter and share intel­li­gent media with your friends. Or bet­ter yet, sign up for our dai­ly email and get a dai­ly dose of Open Cul­ture in your inbox. And if you want to make sure that our posts def­i­nite­ly appear in your Face­book news­feed, just fol­low these sim­ple steps.

Look­ing for free, pro­fes­sion­al­ly-read audio books from Audible.com, includ­ing works by Crich­ton and Orwell? Here’s a great, no-strings-attached deal. If you start a 30 day free tri­al with Audible.com, you can down­load two free audio books of your choice. Get more details on the offer here.

via Red­dit

Relat­ed Con­tent:

George Orwell’s Five Great­est Essays (as Select­ed by Pulitzer-Prize Win­ning Colum­nist Michael Hiltzik)

T.S. Eliot, as Faber & Faber Edi­tor, Rejects George Orwell’s “Trot­skyite” Nov­el Ani­mal Farm (1944)

George Orwell Explains in a Reveal­ing 1944 Let­ter Why He’d Write 1984

George Orwell’s Har­row­ing Race to Fin­ish 1984 Before His Death