Introduction to the Attribution of Literature The Re-Attribution of the British 18th and 19th Century Corpuses

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

Biography

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.

“I found it an education.”

Larry Niven, best-selling Nebula, Hugo and Locus award-winner

 

“I am delighted to see the publication of Volume I of her fascinating and controversial reattribution project. It is no secret that challenging traditional beliefs and assumptions, regardless of the field, is typically met with criticism. Yet, we know that discovery and enlightenment are always led by risk takers who can see what others cannot see. Thoroughly researched and well written, Faktorovich’s Introduction to the Attribution of Literature explains her methodology in determining the true authorship of many post-Renaissance works. It is a valuable contribution to English literature and to the field of philology.”

Lesly F. Massey, PhD

 

“Dr. Anna Faktorovich’s re-attribution studies expose previous fraudulent authorship claims for much of the ‘ghostwritten’ literature in the Western canon. She has examined evidence in handwriting and biographical data to uncover the true identities of the authorship of many of the bylines in respective centuries. The results are astonishing and, I believe, could outmode and transform the current paradigms of both literary theory and criticism.”

Dr. Louis Gallo, Professor Emeritus, Radford University