Fiction, Non-Fiction, and Family Writing

Abstract

The boundaries of literary genres have long been contested. Stylometric investigations of genres — for example, to identify genre through distant reading — is by no means a new area for research. Computational methods are especially useful for large corpora that have not previously been the subject of many enquiries. This might mean the work of a non-canonical author or work that has not been published. Both are true of the primary text used in this paper: a notebook of anecdotes kept by Frances Eleanor Trollope between January 1879 and March 1890. These anecdotes were written in a prose style but were only intended for the consumption of family. While these methods have been used to analyze unpublished works the aim of this research is often to attribute authorship. This paper uses stylometry to compare Trollopewith her published works of both fiction and non-fiction.