Stylometry and Collaborative Authorship: Eddy, Lovecraft, and 'The Loved Dead'

The authorship of the 1924 short story ‘The Loved Dead’ has been contested by family members of Clifford Martin Eddy, Jr. and Sunand Tryambak Joshi, a leading scholar on Howard Phillips Lovecraft. The authors of this article use stylometric methods to provide evidence for a claim about the authorship of the story and to analyze the nature of Eddy’s collaboration with Lovecraft. Further, we extend Rybicki, Hoover, and Kestemont’s (Collaborative authorship: Conrad, Ford, and rolling delta. Literary and Linguistic Computing , 2014; 29 , 422–31) analysis of stylometry as it relates to collaborations in order to reveal the necessary considerations for employing a stylometric approach to authorial collaboration.