Candidates

Two independent frameworks are applied to all assessed candidates: Diana Price’s literary paper trail (ten categories of primary source documentation that Elizabethan writers routinely left behind), and a convergence analysis (evidence strands drawn from the works, the publication history, and the historical record). No single framework is decisive, the interest lies in where they agree. Two Frameworks page

How Candidates Are Selected

This site assesses candidacies; it does not originate them. The set assessed here is a representative sample, not a shortlist: it stands for authorship advocacy as a whole. And the assessment finds the same thing in every case, however it is ranked, and however sure its advocates are, it meets the same ceiling: no primary-source document connects any candidate to the works as their author. A high ranking without that document is bragging rights, not proof. Further names would only re-instance that finding, never overturn it, which, as much as any limit of time or inclination, is why the site does not set out to enlarge the field. It is not the place to argue a new name in; that case belongs in the debate. What the site asks instead, of everyone (its own readers included) is the harder thing: a measure of self-scrutiny in exactly those most certain they are right. The criteria set out here are offered, in that spirit, to anyone who wants to test a case against them.

The candidates on this site are not the only names ever proposed. Two separate questions decide who appears here and how fully, and they are kept apart so that inclusions and exclusions can be judged against a consistent rule.

First, is this a recognised candidacy? A name earns a page only once it has acquired currency in the authorship debate independently of the person who first proposed it: discussed, circulated, and argued by others, and traceable in the literature beyond its originator’s own writing. Every candidacy begins with a single advocate; it earns a place here when the discussion has outgrown that advocate. A proposal still found only in its originator’s own output, however extensive, and whether self-published, freely posted, or submitted to a society, has not yet crossed this line, because the test is independent uptake, not the advocate’s own volume. This gate is candidate-neutral: it asks whether a case has entered the field, not whether it is right.

Second, how far has the case been established? A recognised candidacy is then grouped by whether its authorship case has appeared in a qualifying publication: a book-length monograph from a press that publishes authors other than the candidate’s own advocate, or a peer-reviewed article in a venue with independent editorial oversight outside the authorship-advocacy community. Self-published works, author-imprint and vanity-press titles, and publications by authorship-advocacy societies do not qualify; a work’s price or online accessibility has no bearing either way.

Having a page is not an endorsement. Depth of assessment reflects how much of the case has been established: a candidacy with a qualifying publication and a documentary record substantial enough to score in full receives a full framework assessment across the Price paper trail and Convergence tables; where the published case has not yet engaged the primary-source silence, the assessment is preliminary; where no qualifying publication exists, the page documents the argument and why it does not meet the threshold. Publication status is separate from evidential strength, the framework scores measure the record, and the two can diverge.