John Burrows

All the Way Through: Testing for Authorship in Different Frequency Strata

This article describes the operation of two new tests of authorship and offers some results. Both tests rely on controlled contrasts of word-frequency and both exclude the very common words, which have been put to such good use in recent years. One test treats of words used with some consistency by a target-author but more sporadically by others. The second treats of words used sporadically by the target-author but not by most others. (The inclusion of words that some other authors use avoids the strict constraint that has impoverished this form of evidence.) In suitable cases, both tests prove very accurate. The fact that evidence of authorship can be detected in these three distinct frequency-strata helps to explain why such tests should work at all and so encourages the development of even better ones.

‘An ocean where each kind. . .’: Statistical analysis and some major determinants of literary style

The statistical analysis of literary texts has yielded valuable results, not least when it has treated of the frequency patterns of very common words. But, whereas particular frequency patterns have usually been examined as discrete phenomena, it is possible to correlate the frequency profiles of all the very common words, to subject the resulting correlation matrix to eigen analysis, and to present the results in graphic form. The specimens offered here deal, first, with differences among Jane Austens characters and, secondly, with differences between authors. The most striking general differences among the authors studied relate to historical eras and authorial gender.

Who wrote Shamela? Verifying the Authorship of a Parodic Text

Imitative texts of high quality are of some importance to students of attribution, especially those who use computational methods. The authorship of such texts is always likely to be difficult to demonstrate. In some cases, the identity of the author is a question of interest to literary scholars. Even when that is not so, students of attribution face a challenge. If we cannot distinguish between original and imitation in such cases, we must always concede that an imitator may have been at work. Shamela (1741) has always been regarded as a brilliant parody. When it is subjected to our standard common-words tests of authorship, it yields mixed results. A new procedure, in which special word-lists are established according to a predetermined set of rules, proves more effective. It needs, however, to be tried in other cases.

Lyrical drama and the turbid mountebanks': styles of dialogue in romantic and renaissance tragedy

Critics have condemned English Romantic tragedies as a series of poor imitations of Renaissance tragedy. This paper tests such “literary-critical” questions through statistical comparisons of ten plays from each group. The measures chosen give evidence of a strong and consistent difference between the groups, going beyond historical changes in the language. The Romantic tragedies are more expository; the Renaissance ones include more commonplace interactions between characters. The later plays do not show the marked variations in function-word frequencies of their predecessors. Of the Renaissance plays, Shakespeares show the closest affinity to the Romantic tragedies, and the most telling contrasts.