Introduction to the Attribution of Literature

The Re-Attribution of the British 18th and 19th Century Corpuses
1. Auflage 2025
ISBN: 978-1-032-82111-5
Verlag: Routledge

Buch, Englisch, 240 Seiten, Format (B × H): 183 mm x 260 mm, Gewicht: 654 g

Introduction to the Attribution of Literature describes the first unbiased and accessible authorship attribution method, and uses it to present the first accurate re-attribution of 311 canonical texts from the 18th century to only 10 ghostwriters, and 323 texts from the 19th century to 11 ghostwriters. For example, the little-known Sir Francis Cowley Burnand is chronologically, stylometrically, and with handwriting analysis, proven to be the ghostwriter behind 55 canonical tested texts, including "Emily Bronte's" Wuthering Heights, "Collins'" Woman in White, "Doyle's" Sherlock Holmes, "Kipling's" Captain Courageous, "Stoker's" Dracula, "Anthony Trollope's" American Senator, "Wells'" Island of Doctor Moreau, "Wilde's" Picture of Dorian Gray, and "Dickens'" Great Expectations. This method applies a combination of 23 to 28 different types of punctuation, parts-of-speech, and lexical linguistic tests. Parts of this book offer extensive statistical evidence in support of why this method’s findings are quantitatively reliable. If preceding attribution methods had been equally reliable; then, they would have also concluded canonical British texts have been overwhelmingly ghostwritten. A section in this book explains the methodological flaws of these preceding attribution approaches, because of which they have incorrectly reaffirmed their canonically-accepted bylines. It includes definitions of central stylometric terminology, and explains how readers can apply the described strategies to their own attribution research at any academic level.

Zielgruppe

Postgraduate and Undergraduate Advanced

Autoren/Hrsg.

Faktorovich, Anna

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literarische Strömungen & Epochen
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Vergleichende Literaturwissenschaft

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Introduction

Part I: The New Stylometric Attribution Method

Chapter 1. Anti-Assumptions as Pre-Requisites for Computational Stylometry

Chapter 2. The Steps of the Recommended Stylometric Attribution Method

Chapter 3. Selecting a Suitable Corpus

Chapter 4. Preparing Texts for Testing

Chapter 5. Reasons for the Use of Free Accessible Software

Chapter 6. Discussion of the Data in the 18th and 19th Century Corpuses

Chapter 7. A Method for the Quantitative Selection of the Most Likely Ghostwriter in a Linguistic-Group

Part II: Experiments to Explain Weaknesses of Previous Attribution Methods

Chapter 8. Thomas Mendenhall’s Visual Curve Word-Length Comparison Model (1887)

Chapter 9. George Udny Yule’s Sentence-Length Ranges and Statistics Model (1939)

Chapter 10. George Udny Yule’s Vocabulary Model (1944)

Chapter 11. Zhao and Zobel’s 634-Text Corpus (2007)

Part III: Experiments to Verify the New Method’s Accessibility and Accuracy

Chapter 12. Statistical Comparison of Standard versus Newly Proposed Stylometric Methodologies

Index

Über Autor(innen)

Anna Faktorovich is the Director and Founder of Anaphora Literary Press. She taught English literature and composition for over four years at colleges including the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, Edinboro University of Pennsylvania and the Middle Georgia College. She has a Ph.D. in English Literature and Criticism. She has published Rebellion as Genre (2013), Formulas of Popular Fiction (2014), and literary and linguistic articles in periodicals such as Humanities Bulletin, Critical Survey and East-West Cultural Passage.