 | Studies in bibliography |  |
Introduction
This article describes and illustrates the use of computer-assisted methods
of textual analysis to facilitate author identification. The task was to
examine two anonymous pamphlets on the Regency Crisis, prompted by the
temporary mental derangement of George III from November 1788 to February
1789, and to give an opinion on the probability that both works were
written by the future philosophical anarchist William Godwin. If they could
be attributed to Godwin, this would not only add two significant items to the
canon of his works, but also shed light on the development of his thought
during a period of his career about which little is otherwise known. Since
there was some external evidence for Godwin's authorship of one pamphlet
and a possible external indicator for the other, the thrust of the examination
was to assess whether or not supporting internal evidence could be found.
The research dealt with five collections of material: the two Regency pamphlets
in question; known political pamphlets by Godwin; other writings drawn
from various points in Godwin's career; other known-author pamphlets on
the Regency Crisis; and, finally, a selection of writings by Godwin's contemporaries,
Thomas Paine, Richard Price, Joseph Priestley, Joseph Towers,
and Mary Wollstonecraft, together with one example of work by his daughter,
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley.
Both the quantity of texts examined and the length of the titles have
required us to adopt a coding system to assist the reader in identifying the
material under discussion. For example, "TP 15=Reason2.9" identifies the
author as Thomas Paine, shows that this is the fifteenth example of his work,
numbered in chronological sequence, abbreviates the title, The Age of Reason:
Part the Second (1795), and shows that we are using the ninth chapter of
that work. Codes which do not end with numbers indicate that we have used
the whole text, while codes with a single number at the end indicate whole
chapters from a book. In the charts, only the initial chronological sequence
code is used for clarity of presentation, while Godwin's texts are marked by
squares, the two pamphlets in question by circles, and all other texts by triangles.
In the text, the first reference to each main work is given in full and
subsequent references are by shortened titles. The two pamphlets under discussion,
once identified in full, are referred to simply as Law and Reflexions,
respectively, to distinguish them from the texts of known authorship.
adopted in the charts, are provided in the list of references, and a table listing
the number of words in each text is given in an appendix.
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