Computational-Linguistics Re-Attribution of 16-17th Century British Literature

This data is made publicly available to support the conclusions described in a series of articles that rely on it to re-attributed 303 English-language texts from between the 1510s and 1660s. The data is derived using Anna Faktorovich’s entirely new 27-test computational-linguistics authorial-attribution method designed for this study. The 27 tests measure punctuation, word groups, emotional categories, lexical and linguistic density, passive voice and the top-6 words and letters. The initial goal was solving the mystery of who wrote “William Shakespeare’s” works if, as records indicate, Shakespeare was illiterate and could not have written them himself. The findings indicated that these texts were all written by a Ghostwriting Workshop with six members: Richard Verstegan, Josuah Sylvester, Gabriel Harvey, Benjamin Jonson, William Byrd and William Percy. Past computational-linguistics studies of the “Shakespeare” canon have mistakenly assumed all “Shakespeare”-attributed texts were actually written solely by the one man called William Shakespeare. This bias has skewed their results, so that most texts of uncertain “Shakespearean” authorship have changed bylines as studies derived variously skewed results. BRRAM's Volumes 1-2 explain the literary and biographical analysis that went into choosing these particular six ghostwriters, as well as the method employed, structural patterns, the historical background and various other elements that build this case. The data alone also speaks for itself. The findings are particularly blatant in the visualizations of the matches between the texts in each linguistic-group in the included diagrams. Three of Anna Faktorovich's computational linguistics articles have been published in scholarly journals: 1. “Manipulation of Audience-Size by ‘Shakespeare’ and Henslowe: Nonexistent Plays and the Murderous Lenders”, Critical Survey (Spring 2022). 2. “Falsifications and Fabrications in the Standard Computational-Linguistics Authorial-Attribution Methods: A Comparison of the Methodology in ‘Unmasking’ with the 28-Tests”, Journal of Information Ethics (Fall 2021). 3. “Publishers and Hack Writers: Signs of Collaborative Writing in the ‘Defoe’ Canon”, Journal of Information Ethics (Fall 2020). This study was preceded by another book-length study with a modified multi-test computational-linguistics attribution method that was applied to the canon surrounding 18th century British texts; this study will be re-written and published in the future. The ideas that were employed in these studies were first developed for Anna Faktorovich’s book called Gender Bias in Mystery and Romance Novel Publishing: Mimicking Femininity and Masculinity (Atlanta: Anaphora Literary Press, 2015). The 20 volumes of this British Renaissance Re-Attribution and Modernization Series (BRRAM) have been published by Anaphora Literary Press between 2021-3: https://anaphoraliterary.com/attribution/.