Attributing Authorship An Introduction

Recent literary scholarship has seen a shift of interest away from questions of attribution. Yet these questions remain urgent and important for any historical study of writing, and have been given a powerful new impetus by advances in statistical studies of language and the coming on line of large databases of texts in machine-searchable form. The present book is the first comprehensive survey of the field from a literary perspective to appear for forty years. It covers both traditional and computer based approaches to attribution, and evaluates each in respect of their potentialities and limitations. It revisits a number of famous controversies, including those concerning the authorship of the Homeric poems, books from the Old and New Testaments, and the plays of Shakespeare. Written with wit as well as erudition Attributing Authorship will make this intriguing field accessible for students and scholars alike.

Abbreviations; Illustrations; Introduction; Acknowledgements; 1. Individuality and sameness; 2. Historical survey; 3. Defining authorship; 4. External evidence; 5. Internal evidence; 6. Stylistic evidence; 7. Gender and Authorship; 8. Craft and science; 9. Bibliographical evidence; 10. Forgery and attribution; 11. Shakespeare and Co.; 12. Arguing attribution; Bibliography; Index.

Recent literary scholarship has seen a shift of interest away from questions of attribution. This book is the first comprehensive survey of the field from a literary perspective to appear for forty years. Written with wit and erudition, this book will make this intriguing field accessible for students and scholars.

Harold Love is Professor of English at Monash University. He has written extensively on early modern English literature and the history of the performing arts in Australia.