Attributing Authorship
An Introduction

The present book is the first comprehensive survey of attribution from a literary perspective to appear for forty years.

Harold Love (Author)

9780521789486, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 20 June 2002

280 pages, 2 b/w illus.
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.6 cm, 0.38 kg

"Drawing on a wide range of authorship studies and thoroughly conversant with the methods discussed, Love is essential reading for anyone investigating the authorship of a document or evaluating the evidence behind an attribution."
-MLA: Literary Research Guide

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.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: general [DSB], Literary theory [DSA]