At 9:20 AM -0400 5/14/01, Jim Windle wrote:
>...Beale cipher refer to this point. The article also references
>two books, which are now old but might be useful though not having
>read them I can't really say. They are:
>
>Morton, A. 1978 Literary Detection: How to Prove Authorship and
>Fraud in Literature and Documents. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons
>
>Williams, C.B. 1970 Style and Vocabulary: Numerical Studies London:
>Charles Griffin and Co.
>
>The other reference which seems interesting, though I imagine hard
>to find, is:
>
>Nickel, J. 1982 Discovered, the Secret of Beale's Treasure Virginia
>Magazine of History and Biography. 90(3)July: 310-324
>
>Ths last is interesting because he went to the trouble of comparing
>writing samples against controls of samples by other writers of the
>same period and geographic area in order to establish what was
>distinctive about the sample. The author was at the time a
>professor at the University of Kentucky. He seems to have done a
>pretty good job. It strikes me that this sort of thing is sound in
>theory but fairly hard to execute effectively, as well as subject to
>some degree of subjectivity.
>
>I also have a hazy recollection of this sort of analysis being used
>on the "Hitler diaries" a few years ago.
And for the authorship of Shakespeare's works (Bacon, the Earl, etc.).\
Some months ago I skimmed a fascinating book on literary authorship.
A search of Google turns it up: Don Foster's "Author Unknown." Here's
a review in "Salon." Amazon will have more reviews, and ordering info.
http://www.salon.com/books/review/2000/11/02/foster/
The main chapter of interest to me was the one on Thomas Pynchon. The
connections to my own residence area (Aptos, Calif., near Santa
Cruz), the novel "Vineland" (1990), the letters of Wanda Tinasky (a
big mystery...), and so on.
Better do the work on development of style analysis tools before the
new laws kick in.
--Tim May
--
Timothy C. May [EMAIL PROTECTED] Corralitos, California
Political: Co-founder Cypherpunks/crypto anarchy/Cyphernomicon
Technical: physics/soft errors/Smalltalk/Squeak/agents/games/Go
Personal: b.1951/UCSB/Intel '74-'86/retired/investor/motorcycles/guns
