Anonymous other works

Chronicles, scriptures, grimoires, codices, and stranger things: the anonymous works that fit no single modern genre.

49 works.

Still unknown
Amduat
Date unrecorded · other
An ancient Egyptian netherworld book describing the sun god's journey through the twelve hours of night. Like all Egyptian funerary literature, it names no author.
Later revealed
American Writers
Date unrecorded · other
John Neal's 1824 to 1825 survey of American authors, published in Blackwood's Magazine under the signature X.Y.Z. The first history of American literature, attributed and documented.
Still unknown
Book of Caverns
Date unrecorded · other
An ancient Egyptian netherworld book depicting the sun god's passage over six caverns of the underworld. No author is recorded in the tradition.
Still unknown
Book of the Dead
Date unrecorded · other
The ancient Egyptian collection of funerary spells guiding the dead through the afterlife. Tradition associates such texts with the god Thoth; no historical author exists in the record.
Still unknown
Book of the Earth
Date unrecorded · other
An ancient Egyptian funerary composition showing the sun's night journey through the earth god Aker. Anonymous, like all Egyptian netherworld books.
Still unknown
Book of the Heavens
Date unrecorded · other
A group of New Kingdom compositions charting the sun's passage across the sky and through the body of the sky goddess Nut. No author is recorded.
Still unknown
Book of the Netherworld
Date unrecorded · other
The family of ancient Egyptian compositions describing the underworld's geography and the sun's night journey. All are anonymous products of priestly tradition.
Still unknown
Chilam Balam
Date unrecorded · other
The Yucatec Maya books of prophecy, history, and medicine, compiled by unnamed town scribes and attributed by tradition to the priest Chilam Balam.
Still unknown
Coffin Texts
Date unrecorded · other
The Middle Kingdom corpus of Egyptian funerary spells painted on coffins, ancestor of the Book of the Dead. Composed anonymously within priestly tradition.
Still unknown
Corpus Hermeticum
Date unrecorded · other
Greek wisdom dialogues from Roman Egypt, pseudepigraphically attributed to the legendary Hermes Trismegistus. Their actual authors are unknown.
Still unknown
De Dubiis Nominibus
Date unrecorded · other
An early medieval Latin grammatical treatise on nouns of doubtful gender, compiled by an unnamed grammarian.
Still unknown
Diaries of Court Ladies of Old Japan
Date unrecorded · other
Heian court diaries by Japanese noblewomen, transmitted in a tradition where several diarists' personal names were never recorded.
Still unknown
Dresden Codex
Date unrecorded · other
The finest surviving pre-Columbian Maya manuscript, an astronomical and ritual almanac painted by unnamed scribes around the eleventh to thirteenth century.
Still unknown
Enchiriadis
Date unrecorded · other
The ninth century 'Enchiriadis' pair of music treatises that first systematized Western polyphony. Their authors are unknown; an old attribution to Hucbald was rejected.
Still unknown
Enûma Eliš
Date unrecorded · other
The Babylonian creation epic in which Marduk defeats Tiamat and orders the cosmos. Composed by unnamed priests, probably in the second millennium BCE.
Still unknown
Eridu Genesis
Date unrecorded · other
The Sumerian flood story, in which the gods send a deluge and king Ziusudra survives in a boat. Its composers are unknown.
Still unknown
I Ching
Date unrecorded · other
The ancient Chinese divination classic. Tradition credits legendary figures such as Fuxi and King Wen; its actual formation was gradual and its authors are unknown.
Still unknown
Instructions of Shuruppak
Date unrecorded · other
Sumerian wisdom literature framed as a father's counsel to his son Ziusudra, among the oldest surviving literature. Its framing sage is legend, its writers unknown.
Still unknown
Key of Solomon
Date unrecorded · other
The most famous of the grimoires, attributed by its own tradition to King Solomon. Its actual medieval and Renaissance compilers are unknown.
Still unknown
Litany of Re
Date unrecorded · other
A New Kingdom Egyptian funerary text invoking the sun god in seventy five forms. Produced by priestly tradition; the record names no author, only 'the clergy'.
Still unknown
One Thousand and One Nights
Date unrecorded · other
The great Arabic story cycle of Scheherazade, assembled over a thousand years from Indian, Persian, and Arabic sources by unnamed storytellers and compilers.
Still unknown
pasquinade
Date unrecorded · other
The anonymous satirical verses posted on Rome's 'talking statues' since the fifteenth century, aimed at popes and the powerful. Anonymity was the whole point.
Still unknown
Pierre Marteau
Date unrecorded · other
The fictitious imprint 'Pierre Marteau of Cologne' under which printers across Europe issued banned and scandalous books for two centuries.
Still unknown
Pyramid Texts
Date unrecorded · other
The oldest religious texts of ancient Egypt, carved in pyramids from the twenty fourth century BCE. Institutional priestly compositions with no recorded author.
Still unknown
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
Date unrecorded · other
The late fourteenth century masterpiece of Middle English romance. Its author, called the Pearl poet, has never been identified.
Later revealed
Skibby Chronicle
Date unrecorded · other
A sixteenth century Danish chronicle found walled up in Skibby church, written anonymously. Scholarship identifies the Carmelite Poul Helgesen as its author.
Still unknown
Spell of the Twelve Caves
Date unrecorded · other
An ancient Egyptian funerary composition enumerating twelve caves of the underworld and their gods. Anonymous priestly tradition.
Still unknown
The Aesop Romance
Date unrecorded · other
The ancient Greek folk biography of Aesop the fabulist, composed and elaborated by unknown hands over centuries.
Still unknown
The Animated Skeleton
Date unrecorded · other
A 1798 Gothic novel published anonymously by the Minerva Press, in which apparent supernatural terror hides human machinery. Its author was never identified.
Still unknown
The Book of Gates
Date unrecorded · other
The New Kingdom Egyptian netherworld book of the twelve gates of the night. An institutional priestly composition with no recorded author.
Still unknown
The Cavern of Death
Date unrecorded · other
A 1794 Gothic chapbook romance of murder revealed in a haunted forest cavern, published anonymously and never attributed.
Still unknown
The Great Organ in the Boston Music Hall
Date unrecorded · other
An anonymous 1865 descriptive pamphlet on the celebrated Boston Music Hall organ, of the kind institutions issued without named authors.
Still unknown
The Lady of Escalot
Date unrecorded · other
The medieval Arthurian tale of the maiden who dies for love of Lancelot, transmitted anonymously in the romance tradition.
Still unknown
The Log-Cabin Lady
Date unrecorded · other
A 1922 anonymous memoir of a frontier-born woman's education in manners and marriage to a diplomat, published without a name to protect its author.
Still unknown
The Princess Ilsée
Date unrecorded · other
A nineteenth century literary fairy tale of the Ilse valley in the Harz mountains, published anonymously and never attributed.
Later revealed
The Sorrows of Yamba
Date unrecorded · other
A 1795 abolitionist poem in the voice of an enslaved African woman, published anonymously in the Cheap Repository Tracts. Hannah More's authorship is documented.
Still unknown
Voynich manuscript
Date unrecorded · other
The fifteenth century codex written in an undeciphered script and an unknown language. Author, purpose, and meaning all remain unidentified.
Pseudonym
Gesta Hungarorum
Published 1200 · other
The oldest surviving Hungarian chronicle, written around 1200 by an author who signed only 'P. dictus magister', known ever since as Anonymus.
Still unknown
The Secret History of the Mongols
Published 1240 · other
The oldest surviving Mongolian literary work, an inside chronicle of Genghis Khan written after his death in 1227 by an unnamed court author.
Disputed
Hypnerotomachia Poliphili
Published 1499 · other
The lavish 1499 Venetian dream romance whose chapter initials spell an acrostic pointing to Francesco Colonna. The identification remains likely but unproven.
Still unknown
Theophrastus redivivus
Published 1659 · other
The clandestine 1659 Latin compendium of atheist argument, the boldest irreligious text of its century. Its compiler has never been identified.
Later revealed
Fantasmagoriana
Published 1812 · other
The anonymous 1812 French anthology of German ghost stories that the Byron-Shelley circle read in 1816, sparking Frankenstein. Its translator-compiler was Jean-Baptiste Benoit Eyries.
Later revealed
Tales of the Dead
Published 1813 · other
The anonymous 1813 English ghost story anthology drawn from Fantasmagoriana, translated and edited by Sarah Elizabeth Utterson, with a story of her own added.
Pseudonym
Jack Pots
Published 1900 · other
A 1900 collection of poker stories published under the byline Eugene Edwards, believed by card scholarship to be another pseudonym of the unidentified S. W. Erdnase.
Still unknown
The Strange Death of Adolf Hitler
Published 1939 · other
A 1939 book claiming Hitler died in 1938 and was replaced by doubles, published anonymously as a purported insider account. Its author was never identified.
Later revealed
Through Our Enemies' Eyes
Published 2003 · other
The 2003 study of bin Laden published as 'Anonymous', required by the author's CIA employment. Michael Scheuer was identified and acknowledged the book.
Pseudonym
Recipes for Disaster: An Anarchist Cookbook
Published 2004 · other
The 2004 direct action handbook published by the CrimethInc. collective, whose contributors are deliberately unnamed as a matter of principle.
Pseudonym
Rolling Thunder
Published 2005 · other
An anarchist journal of eleven issues, 2005 to 2014, published by the CrimethInc. collective with deliberately unnamed contributors.
Later revealed
A Warning
Published 2019 · other
The 2019 book credited to Anonymous, a senior Trump administration official. Miles Taylor revealed himself as the author in 2020.

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