Adaptation or Original Work?
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A controversy has occurred over two biographical books both of which are titled Charity & Sylvia.
The author of the 2014 non-fiction Charity & Sylvia, Rachel Hope Cleves, is accusing the author of the 2026 graphic novel Charity & Sylvia, Tillie Walden, of adapting the 2014 work for the 2026 graphic novel without proper credit and is asking that the graphic novel acknowledge the adaptation and give credit where credit is due and pay licensing rights.
Author Rachel Hope Cleves has written an open letter about the issue:
Charity and Sylvia’s story has been so deeply meaningful to so many people—their story has, without exaggeration, saved lives-that I’ve tried to be happy that Walden’s book is making their story more widely known, even if she chose to take my title and my cover design as well as my narrative and my research with only a single sentence of acknowledgement at the end of her book in her notes section. Walden’s illustrations and storytelling are wonderful, as I told her when she reached out to me during the writing process. It would take nothing away from her hard work to be honest about how it is built on my hard work. But in Walden’s publicity tour, she has repeatedly made the claim to have based her book on her extensive research in the archive without acknowledging that her book is, in fact, based on my book. This false representation demands response not only for my sake, but for the sake of all the hard-working historians out there whose work has similarly been taken without credit.
Samatha Puc of The Beat contacted Cleves to discuss the matter.
In the graphic novel’s afterword, Walden writes,
I was able to weave these short remembrances together into a story with the added context of over 900 letters (nearly all sent to them) and the formidable, endlessly informative history on their lives written by Rachel Hope Cleves titled Charity and Sylvia and published in 2014. Without these different angles from which to see them, my job would have been much harder. Their own papers rarely mentioned their childhoods, but because of the work of historian Hope Cleves and her research into that, I was able to describe their youth with a satisfying amount of detail.
This is the only time Cleves is mentioned in the graphic novel, but her name appears a total of 50 times on Walden’s website; in the notes for “Part Four,” [link added] Walden refers to Cleves as “our Holy Mother of knowledge.” Cleves was sent a link to the website after she posted her open letter, and says that it indicates to her that Walden’s book is a clear adaptation of hers.
Cleves tells The Beat:
“Drawn & Quarterly should have optioned my book and titled Tillie’s in a way that indicated it is an adaptation,” she continues. “They should have put me front and center. Not knocking her incredible work, but they should have openly acknowledged that it’s a graphic novel adapted from my book. … When you go to Tillie’s website where she lays out the process, it’s clear that it’s an adaptation, and that is at odds with Drawn & Quarterly’s marketing and packaging of the book. There’s no acknowledgment of me, my title, my cover, my story, or my research except for one sentence buried in the notes. Everything else is online.”
Neither Drawn & Quarterly nor Walden had responded to emails from The Beat at press time.
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