Style, Substance, and the Status of the Defoe Canon

This article reattributes to Daniel Defoe one pamphlet and confirms his authorship of three works currently listed as ‘probable’ attributions. More generally, it proposes refinements to authorship attribution methods with reference to Defoe’s widely disputed canon, a canon recognized as a special case which has implications for how the assignment of authorship of anonymous topical material from the period more generally. It contends that impressionistic evaluation should be discounted and that close parallels with securely ascribed works, sometimes amounting to self-borrowing, should be given greater evidentiary weight. The article reappraises the evidence for Defoe’s authorship of a pamphlet, The Justice and Necessity of a War with Holland (1712), and a book, The Present State of the Parties in Great Britain (1712), proving Defoe’s authorship of both. The article ends with a summary and assessment of changes to the Defoe canon since the publication of Furbank and Owens’s Critical Bibliography (1998).