Stylometry and pornographic novels: a replication study on the Mutzenbacher case

Abstract

The paper conducts a replication study on a case of authorship attribution, confirming the influence of genre on stylometric analyses. In particular, it focuses on the impact of the pornographic genre on the usage of function words, which are the key feature for the Delta method. Case study is Josephine Mutzenbacher, a pornographic novel published anonymously in Austria in 1906 and initially attributed to Felix Salten. A recent paper, however, adopted the Delta method to attribute it to Ernst Klein. Our replication shows how this result depends mainly on the choice of including in the analysis also pornographic novels by Klein, which drive the attribution thanks to their over-usage of first-person pronouns.