Owen's cipher wheel and Baconians - Revision history

Wtrettien: /* Recent scholarship */

2026-03-16T18:54:41Z

Recent scholarship

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 * misses context of facsimiles
 * points out that Harvard played a significant role in authorship controversies
 Shawn Rosenheim, ''The Cryptographic Imagination: Secret Writing from Edgar Allen Poe to the Internet'' (1997)

Wtrettien: /* Recent scholarship */

2026-03-11T13:39:33Z

Recent scholarship

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

			Bruce Danner, "The Anonymous Shakespeare," in Anonymity in Early Modern England (2011)
			* blames Shakespearean scholarship for anti-Statfordianism, accuses Shakespearean scholars of themselves not using solid or coherent evidence when devising Shakespeare's biography

	Paul Edmondson and Stanley Wells, eds., ''Shakespeare Beyond Doubt'' (2013)		Paul Edmondson and Stanley Wells, eds., ''Shakespeare Beyond Doubt'' (2013)

Wtrettien: /* Recent scholarship */

2026-03-09T19:22:18Z

Recent scholarship

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	Shawn Rosenheim, ''The Cryptographic Imagination: Secret Writing from Edgar Allen Poe to the Internet'' (1997)		Shawn Rosenheim, ''The Cryptographic Imagination: Secret Writing from Edgar Allen Poe to the Internet'' (1997)
	* mostly interested in Poe, has a chapter on telegraphy and how it helped spur on interest in cryptography		* mostly interested in Poe, has a chapter on telegraphy and how it helped spur on interest in cryptography

			Glazener on Delia Bacon, Lesser respons (2007)
			* includes quote from Lesser: It is worth thinking far more carefully than we have about how that quest for a "mystic cipher"-so laughable when used to anagrammatize the first letter of each capitalized word in the engraving on Shakespeare's funeral monument, or to string together every tenth word of every sixth sonnet in the 1609 edition-is different from the kind of searches for "meanings, behind the ostent," or from what Fredric Jameson calls the "transformation[s] of a given text into an allegory of its particular master code" (58), that get published every few months in Shakespeare Quarterly or ELH. I mean this not as a facile rhetorical question that would assume either that there is or that there is not a real difference between these two
			types of quest, but rather, in the spirit of Glazener's essay, as an open question for historical investigation, and especially for book-historical investigation (353-4)

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

Wtrettien: /* Elizabeth Wells Gallup, The Bi-lateral Cipher of Francis Bacon (1899) */

2024-02-21T02:18:44Z

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

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	Many of her papers in the Bacon cipher collection at NYPL		Many of her papers in the Bacon cipher collection at NYPL

			Harvard has Houghton Mifflin record of her book's readers' report: https://hollisarchives.lib.harvard.edu/repositories/24/archival_objects/744413

	Says it confirms Owen’s word cipher		Says it confirms Owen’s word cipher

Wtrettien: /* Recent scholarship */

2024-02-19T20:23:30Z

Recent scholarship

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

	''Shakespeare Beyond Doubt''		Paul Edmondson and Stanley Wells, eds., ''Shakespeare Beyond Doubt'' (2013)

	Jason Fagone, ''The Woman Who Smashed Codes'' (2017)		Jason Fagone, ''The Woman Who Smashed Codes'' (2017)
	* about Elizebeth Friedman, includes some beginning sections on her work with Elizabeth Wells Gallup		* about Elizebeth Friedman, includes some beginning sections on her work with Elizabeth Wells Gallup

Wtrettien: /* Recent scholarship */

2024-02-19T20:22:42Z

Recent scholarship

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 == Kate H. Prescott, Reminisces of a Baconian (1949) ==
 == Recent scholarship ==
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 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)
@@ Line 88: / Line 101: @@
 Jason Fagone, ''The Woman Who Smashed Codes'' (2017)
 * about Elizebeth Friedman, includes some beginning sections on her work with Elizabeth Wells Gallup

Wtrettien: /* Orville Ward Owen, Sir Francis Bacon’s Cipher Story (1893) */

2024-02-19T20:19:23Z

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

← Older revision		Revision as of 20:19, 19 February 2024
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	Mythic Detroit on Owen: https://www.mythicdetroit.org/index.php?n=Main.DrOrvilleWardOwen		Mythic Detroit on Owen: https://www.mythicdetroit.org/index.php?n=Main.DrOrvilleWardOwen

			Dr. Carla Groenewegen (of Summit University) on Owen's cipher wheel: https://francisbaconsociety.co.uk/baconiana-journals/baconiana-journals-2007-present/baconiana-vol1-no6/#orville-owens-cipher-wheel

	6 volumes (only 5 were published)		6 volumes (only 5 were published)

Wtrettien: /* Recent scholarship */

2024-02-19T20:17:48Z

Recent scholarship

← Older revision		Revision as of 20:17, 19 February 2024
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	Striking out on her own after her time as Dr. Owen’s assistant, Mrs. Gallup focused on Bacon’s omnia per omnia or biliteral cipher, which is described in detail in Bacon’s 1623 Latin rewrite of the Advancement, published as De Augmentis Scientiarum.
	Mrs. Gallup applied Bacon’s instructions to the peculiar collection of italic letters found in the 1623 Folio, and generated an autobiography that is quite similar to Dr. Owen’s. However, her decoding efforts attracted severe criticism. Only Mrs. Gallup, critics pointed out, seemed able to find the hidden message. Others who tried to follow the same method, even those trained by Mrs. Gallup herself, were not able to independently decipher the same story.
	William Friedman, an accomplished cryptographer who was later employed by the US Army, and his wife Elizebeth, were two of Mrs. Gallup’s early assistants. They started their work with her in 1915 and 1916, respectively. After several years of trying, they claimed it was virtually impossible to distinguish between the different italic fonts which, according to Mrs. Gallup, were the vehicle for the biliteral cipher. In their book The Shakespearean Ciphers Examined they write:
	“Dr. Owen found that the Word Cipher used phrases lifted from various plays, giving a totally different context or story in the same blank verse. The Bi-literal Cipher, discovered by Mrs. Gallup, used two different fonts, or styles of type, on the original printed pages. These fonts were distinct but quite close in appearance, and the hidden message was discovered by decoding the pattern they formed. What Mrs. Gallup had deciphered was a text in short prose sentences that eventually corroborated all that Owen had found in the poetic lines of the Word Cipher”
	~~– she isn’t WRONG – Little Gidding, early modern use of italic vs roman to distinguish content; facsimile book~~


	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]		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]

Wtrettien: /* Elizabeth Wells Gallup, The Bi-lateral Cipher of Francis Bacon (1899) */

2024-02-19T20:16:50Z

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

← Older revision		Revision as of 20:16, 19 February 2024
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	== Elizabeth Wells Gallup, The Bi-lateral Cipher of Francis Bacon (1899) ==		== 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		Says it confirms Owen’s word cipher

Wtrettien: Created page with "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 c..."

2024-02-19T20:16:27Z

Created page with "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 c..."

New page

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) ==

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)

== Kate H. Prescott, Reminisces of a Baconian (1949) ==

== 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''

Striking out on her own after her time as Dr. Owen’s assistant, Mrs. Gallup focused on Bacon’s omnia per omnia or biliteral cipher, which is described in detail in Bacon’s 1623 Latin rewrite of the Advancement, published as De Augmentis Scientiarum.
Mrs. Gallup applied Bacon’s instructions to the peculiar collection of italic letters found in the 1623 Folio, and generated an autobiography that is quite similar to Dr. Owen’s. However, her decoding efforts attracted severe criticism. Only Mrs. Gallup, critics pointed out, seemed able to find the hidden message. Others who tried to follow the same method, even those trained by Mrs. Gallup herself, were not able to independently decipher the same story.
William Friedman, an accomplished cryptographer who was later employed by the US Army, and his wife Elizebeth, were two of Mrs. Gallup’s early assistants. They started their work with her in 1915 and 1916, respectively. After several years of trying, they claimed it was virtually impossible to distinguish between the different italic fonts which, according to Mrs. Gallup, were the vehicle for the biliteral cipher. In their book The Shakespearean Ciphers Examined they write:
“Dr. Owen found that the Word Cipher used phrases lifted from various plays, giving a totally different context or story in the same blank verse. The Bi-literal Cipher, discovered by Mrs. Gallup, used two different fonts, or styles of type, on the original printed pages. These fonts were distinct but quite close in appearance, and the hidden message was discovered by decoding the pattern they formed. What Mrs. Gallup had deciphered was a text in short prose sentences that eventually corroborated all that Owen had found in the poetic lines of the Word Cipher”
– she isn’t WRONG – Little Gidding, early modern use of italic vs roman to distinguish content; facsimile book

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]