Owen's cipher wheel and Baconians

Bacon cipher collection NYPL

• Some has been digitized: https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/search/index?utf8=%E2%9C%93&keywords=bacon+cipher

Finding aid: https://archives.nypl.org/mss/176

Delia Bacon, The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakespeare Unfolded (1857)

“'It was a time when authors, who treated of a scientific politics and of a scientific ethics internally connected with it, naturally preferred this more philosophic, symbolic method of indicating their connection with their writings, which would limit the indication to those who could pierce within the veil of a philosophic symbolism. It was the time when the cipher, in which one could write 'omnia per omnia,' was in such request, and when 'wheel ciphers' and 'doubles' were thought not unworthy of philosophic notice. It was a time, too, when the phonographic art was cultivated, and put to other uses than at present, and when a 'nom de plume' was required for other purposes than to serve as the refuge of an author's modesty, or vanity, or caprice. It was a time when puns, and charades, and enigmas, and anagrams, and monograms, and ciphers, and puzzles, were not good for sport and child's play merely; when they had need to be close; when they had need to be solvable, at least, only to those who should solve them. It was a time when all the latent capacities of the English language were put in requisition, and it was flashing and crackling, through all its lengths and breadths, with puns and quips, and conceits, and jokes, and satires, and inlined with philosophic secrets that opened down "into the bottom of a tomb"—that opened into the Tower—that opened on the scaffold and the block.'”

Folger has Delia Bacon’s papers

Vivian Hopkins wrote a biography of her, Prodigal Puritan: A Life of Delia Bacon (1959); Hopkins’ papers are at SUNY Albany: https://archives.albany.edu/description/catalog/ua902-003

Ignatius Donnelly, The Great Cryptogram (1888)

Comes across his child’s book which mention’s Bacon’s cipher

Goes back to Bacon’s work, shows all the ways he is concerned with ciphering

Begins looking in Shakespeare’s work for mentions of Bacon, Shake, Spear, St. Albans, Nicholas (Bacon’s father), Francis, etc. – finds what appear to him to be surprising patterns

Tries to count words around these found words, finds no discernable numerical cipher or pattern, then realizes the modern editions have extra words added etc.

Goes back to First Folio, first reduced edition then Staunton (because text was larger and more legible) Notices odd pagination of F1

“It seemed to me that these repeated instances of Henry V., Troilus and Cressida, Julius Caesar and Timon of Athens proved conclusively that there was some secret depending upon the paging of the Folio, and that these plays had been written upon the basis of a cipher which did not correspond with the natural paging of the Folio; and that this paging had to be forcibly departed from in this way, and continued, per order, even when the printers were correcting minor errors.” (553)

Goes back to page 53 of histories, where word Bacon occurs; counted to the next Bacon, found it was the 371st word; then divided 371 by 53, and the quotient is seven – then notices that there are seven italic words on the first column of page 53 – notes that this is surprising, because requires a certain kind of typographic intervention, e.g. making some words hyphenated, to make exactly 371

Keeps doing this with other words like St Albans, finds the quotient is 6, and there are 6 italic words on the page Explains away the quartos by saying that if he did not print the plays during Shakespeare’s lifetime with the cipher in them, men would say in the future that the plays were really Shakespeare’s and that Bacon had stolen them and interjected a cipher in them (562-3) -”And so he published some of them in quarto.”

Orville Ward Owen, Sir Francis Bacon’s Cipher Story (1893)

recounted (probably unreliably) in Virginia Fellows, The Shakespeare Code – note goodreads reviews of it: https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/186779#CommunityReviews

Fellows gives the cipher wheel to the Summit Lighthouse/University; 2008 NBC News article on this cult: https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna27911980

Mythic Detroit on Owen: https://www.mythicdetroit.org/index.php?n=Main.DrOrvilleWardOwen

6 volumes (only 5 were published)

Several versions of volume 1 on Google books; one has no preface, another describes some “aids” available through the publisher, another has clippings from Detroit newspapers praising the methods

In these clippings, the method is said not to be a hoax because Owen is not capable of literary talent, it is a merely “mechanical” method

Not only plays credited to Shakespare but also George Peele, Christopher Marlow, Robert Greene, and the works of Burton and Spenser

“Argument: Bacon vs. Shakespeare” at the end of volume 1

“This startling statement (with the exception of Spencer’s Faerie-Queene) has been before advanced by Mrs. Pott, William White, J. E. Roe and others, but none of these authors has ever produced the proofs, taken from the plays, allegories, or prose works, of their claims. The keys and cipher have now been found, which unlock the strangely hidden writings, and the hidden story is being rapidly deciphered. I offer as evidence the works themselves as proof of the single authorship, and I request the readers to set aside the different names upon the title pages and ask thesmelves whether two or more men could have written so exactly alike.” (1)

Makes similar argument to Donnelly, that some passages seem out of place and so could only be placed there for purposes of cipher

Finding similar paragraphs in Bacon proves similar authorship

“We find concordant lines, similar paragraphs, and absolute words and thoughts, that are peculiar in themselves, and could have emanated but from one brain. In “As You Like It,” and in the Essay on “Beauty,” and in “Hamlet,” that a handsome and beautiful woman was not and could not be honest and virtuous. It is beyond the thought of man that two men should have, at different periods, brought forth the same idea of virtue and beauty, an idea which is horrible, and showing a low grade of virtue in the handsome and better class of women in his day.” (11)

Volume 2 has cipher wheel pictures at the beginning

Elizabeth Wells Gallup, The Bi-lateral Cipher of Francis Bacon (1899)

Elizabeth Wells Gallup books: https://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/book/lookupname?key=Gallup%2C%20Elizabeth%20Wells%2C%201846%2D

Many of her papers in the Bacon cipher collection at NYPL

Says it confirms Owen’s word cipher

Takes pains to emphasize that she’s attempted to secure “the old original books necessary” (15)

Later says in publisher’s note to the third edition, “The old books necessary to the research could not be procured in America, and during the summer of 1900 Mrs. Gallup and her assistant, Miss Kate E. Wells, visited England to carry on the work in that treasure house of early literature, the British Museum.” (76)

Recent scholarship

David Kahn, The Codebreakers: The Story of Secret Writing (1967)

John Michell, Eccentric Lives and Peculiar Notions (1984)

• Includes chapters on Delia Bacon, Donnelly, and Owen, offering a general overview of their work

James Simpson, Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare? (2010)

Shakespeare Beyond Doubt

Jason Fagone, The Woman Who Smashed Codes (2017)

• about Elizebeth Friedman, includes some beginning sections on her work with Elizabeth Wells Gallup

The Cryptographic Imagination: Secret Writing from Edgar Allen Poe to the Internet

Furness on Baconian theory: Horace Howard Furness wrote in a letter that, "Donnelly's theory about Bacon's authorship is too foolish to be seriously answered. I don't think he started it for any other purpose than notoriety. I believe he doesn't attempt to show that Bacon corrected the proof-sheets of the First Folio, and no human foresight could have told how the printed line would run, and have so regulated the MSS. To Donnelly's theory the pagination & the number of lines in a page are essential."[58]