Methodology
Every entry in this directory is built from documented sources, labeled by status, and honest about what is not known. This page defines the labels and the process.
Corpus and completeness
The directory currently holds 109 works, seeded from Wikipedia's List of anonymously published works and enriched from Wikidata, Project Gutenberg, the Internet Archive, and Open Library. The set is finite and versioned: this is a curated canon, not an unbounded crawl. Current split:29 revealed, 68 unknown, 6disputed, 6 pseudonym-known. 92 works are public domain and 74 link to a verified free full text.
Authorship status definitions
- Revealed
- The author is part of the documented public record: a named edition, a posthumous disclosure, an acknowledged identification, or settled scholarship. Each carries a source, and where recorded, the reveal year and method.
- Pseudonym known
- The byline is documented but the person behind it is not established, or is deliberately withheld. The pseudonym is reported as the byline, never resolved by guesswork.
- Disputed
- Scholarship names candidates and does not agree. Candidates are reported as candidates with their sources. A disputed attribution is never stated as fact, in text or in structured data.
- Unknown
- No author has been identified in the documented record. The entry says so plainly.
Attribution confidence
Attributed authors carry a confidence label. "Documented" means the record itself settles it. "Attributed" means an identification made by others (for example, press analysis) that the author has not personally confirmed; these are worded as identifications, not facts. "Disputed" means competing candidates. Structured data (schema.org Person) is emitted only for documented reveals.
Traditional and legendary attributions
Reference databases sometimes record legendary figures as authors: Solomon for the Key of Solomon, Thoth for Egyptian funerary texts, Fuxi for the I Ching. This directory treats such pseudepigraphic and traditional attributions as part of the work's story, not as authorship, and those works are labeled unknown with the tradition explained in prose.
Copyright status
Works are labeled public domain on either an explicit statement in the source record or a conservative year rule (published 1930 or earlier for the US context in 2026, or plainly historical). In-copyright works get buy and borrow links only, with no text reproduced. Where the status could not be determined it is labeled undetermined and treated like in-copyright.
Automation, review, and corrections
Records are machine-assembled from the sources above, then corrected by an editorial review layer whose every change carries a stated basis. All classifications are marked as generated and not yet independently reviewed, and that flag ships in the data API so downstream users can see it. Corrections are welcome and versioned in the site's repository.
What this site does not do
It does not speculate about identities, amplify unverified claims, or assist the unmasking of authors who are deliberately anonymous. That policy has its own page: editorial standards.