English Bards and Unknown Reviewers: a Stylometric Analysis of Thomas Moore and the Christabel Review

Abstract

Fraught relations between authors and critics are a commonplace of literary history. The particular case that we discuss in this article, a negative review of Samuel Taylor Coleridge s Christabel (1816), has an additional point of interest beyond the usual mixture of amusement and resentment that surrounds a critical rebuke: the authorship of the review remains, to this day, uncertain. The purpose of this article is to investigate the possible candidacy of Thomas Moore as the author of the provocative review. It seeks to solve a puzzle of almost two hundred years, and in the process clear a valuable scholarly path in Irish Studies, Romanticism, and in our understanding of Moore s role in a prominent literary controversy of the age.