Identifying Authors
Revealing an author by analysing the use of seemingly meaningless bits of language – such as so-called function words, e.g. prepositions, conjunctions and personal pronouns – has a long history. This particular technique of authorship attribution came to recent prominence in 2013, when similar methods were used to unmask J. K. Rowling as the author of the crime novel The Cuckoo’s Calling, published under the pseudonym of Robert Galbraith.
When the author is dead, however, it becomes harder to convince people. Take The Night Before Christmas, a poem published anonymously in 1823 and historically attributed to Clement Clarke Moore. In 2016, New Zealand scholar Macdonald Jackson published an exhaustive analysis that used high-frequency words like “that” and “the” to settle on Henry Livingston as the author. This didn’t sit well with everyone. Scott Norsworthy, a specialist in the works of Herman Melville, of Moby Dick fame, derided Jackson’s – and his computer’s – use of “meaningless bits, inconsequential and perhaps random in their distribution”.