Author Unknown: On the Trail of Anonymous - Hardcover

Foster, Don

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0805063579 ISBN 13: 9780805063578

Publisher: Henry Holt and Co., 2000

Synopsis

From the professor who invented literary forensics--and fingered Joe Klein as the author of Primary Colors--comes the inside story of how he solves his most challenging cases

Don Foster is the world's first literary detective. Realizing that everyone's use of language is as distinctive as his or her DNA, Foster developed a revolutionary methodology for identifying the writer behind almost any anonymous document. Now, in this enthralling book, he explains his techniques and invites readers to sit by his side as he searches a mysterious text for the clues that whisper the author's name.
Foster's unique skills first came to light when a front-page New York Times article announced his discovery that a previously unattributed poem was written by Shakespeare. A few weeks later, Foster solved the mystery that had obsessed America for months when he identified Joe Klein as the author of Primary Colors. Foster also took on a case involving the elusive Thomas Pynchon. And his contributions to the Unabomber and JonBenet Ramsey cases have led the FBI and several police forces to hire him to train their organizations.
Introducing a fascinating new field of forensics, Author Unknown will appeal to mystery fans-and to everyone interested in words and the writer's craft.

About this title

About the Author

Don Foster is an English professor at Vassar College and lives in Poughkeepsie, New York.

Reviews

HThe Elizabethan scholar from Vassar College who unmasked Joe Klein as the "Anonymous" who wrote Primary Colors now shakes up Yuletide verse with a reattribution of "A Visit from St. Nicholas." The selected cases of literary detection that lead up to this final surprise are the scholarly equivalent of FBI psychological profiler John Douglas's Mindhunter. Foster's textual forensics have put "A Funeral Elegy" by "W.S." into the Shakespeare canon and helped put Unabomber Ted Kaczynski in prison. His accounts of his high-profile roles in transatlantic Shakespearean squabbles and journalistic whodunits are both personable and page-turning. Whether it's because the statistical side of Foster's methodology is rather technical or that his critics have dismissed him as a "professor with a computer program," he mostly sticks to describing the fingerprints of word choice and telltale punctuation rather than lexical databases and verbal probabilities. In his case for a Scots-Dutch Revolutionary War major, Henry Livingston Jr., as the author of "A Visit from St. Nicholas" and against puritan Manhattan professor Clement Moore, to whom it is traditionally attributed, he argues from not only lively biographic inference but also such small, telling details as the adverbial use of "all" and the Scottish origins of "snug." While lexiphiles will enjoy such minutiae, any book lover can savor the irony of how an Elizabethan elegy eventually put a literary scholar on the trail of a serial murderer. (Nov. 7)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Literary forensics? That's Vassar English professor Foster's specialty. Here he shows how he proved a long-lost poem was Shakespeare's, identified Joe Klein as Anonymous, and more.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.
• Publication date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0805063579
• ISBN 13: 9780805063578
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 320