Ultimately, the author resorted to writing an open letter to Wikipedia, which was published in The New Yorker.

“Dear Wikipedia. I am Philip Roth. I had reason recently to read for the first time the Wikipedia entry discussing my novel The Human Stain. The entry contains a serious misstatement that I would like to ask to have removed,” The Telegraph quoted Roth, as writing.

“This item entered Wikipedia not from the world of truthfulness but from the babble of literary gossip – there is no truth in it at all,” the letter added.

In his 2,600-word letter, Roth then recounted how, when he tried to get the entry changed, he was told by an "English Wikipedia Administrator" in a letter "that I, Roth, was not a credible source".

He said the administrator told him: "I understand your point that the author is the greatest authority on their own work, but we require secondary sources.”

The Wikipedia page for the book has now been amended to include a lengthy extract from Roth''s open letter, it said.