computers and authorship

[Jeffrey L. Meikle]

Grant White wrote:

>One of my old Professors did a lot of early work applying computation
>into literary criticism, early writers like Austen and Hardy were sampled
>and plugged in to the early eighties computing power of the U of New, and
>mapped along an axis. It was all fairly simple stuff, revolving around
>particular word use, but he did produce a rough kind of map, which placed
>writers into a stylistic grouping which usually paralleled their
>particular period. One notable kickback was Erica Jong's novel Fanny,
>which broke the mold, even from her other novels, and sat closer to Ms.
>Austen than her 20thC peers.

Anybody have any ideas about how some of us paranoids who suspect TRP was
writing under other names long before Wanda Tinasky might go about
comparing scanned texts?  Is there software for this?  Anybody have any
experience with it?  Yes, I do have some ideas...but I'm more curious about
the whole process of trying to establish authorship by computer.

Thanks, and a happy new year to all,
Jeff Meikle