The author of a 2014 biography is asking to be credited for a new graphic biography on the same subject by acclaimed comics artist Tillie Walden, reports the Beat, a comics blog.
Rachel Hope Cleves is the author of Charity and Sylvia: A Same-Sex Marriage in Early America, published 12 years ago by Oxford University Press. The book chronicles the lives of Charity Bryant and Sylvia Drake, tailors in Weybridge, Vermont, who lived as a married couple from 1807 to 1851.
Last month, Drawn & Quarterly published Walden’s Charity & Sylvia, which also chronicles the couple’s relationship. In a starred review, a critic for Kirkus praised the book as “a timeless story of marriage, well-grounded in queer history” and “an absolute triumph.” Walden is the author and illustrator of several graphic novels for young adults, including the memoir Spinning.
In a post on the social platform Bluesky, Cleves wrote, “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.”
Cleve told the Beat, “Drawn & Quarterly should have optioned my book and titled Tillie’s in a way that indicated it is an adaptation. 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.”
Peggy Burns, Drawn & Quarterly’s publisher, responded to the claim in an email to the Beat: “Drawn & Quarterly stands by Tillie Walden’s research for her graphic novel, Charity and Sylvia, and asks people to refer to her afterword where she explains how the book came to be, and cites Charity and Sylvia: A Same Sex Marriage in Early America (2014, Oxford University Press) as ‘the formidable, endlessly informative history on their lives by Rachel Hope Cleves’ and explains how indebted she is to Cleves’ research.”
Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.
