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Many people believe Bacon was the son of Queen Elizabeth; mystery portrait at Hampton Court |
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A range of anonymous and pseudonymous writings are attributed to Renaissance polymath Francis Bacon (1561-1626), including ghost-written correspondence and speeches, state propaganda pamphlets, and entertainments for the court and Gray’s Inn. According to Brian Vickers, editor-in-chief of the ongoing sixteen-volume Oxford Francis Bacon,
Although Bacon had a wide and diverse literary output by 1597 (enough to fill several hundred pages of Spedding’s edition of his Occasional Works), none of it had been publicly acknowledged as his composition. Indeed, it was only due to an impending plagiarization that his name finally appeared in print that year, to forestall the unauthorized publication of his Essays . . . Had Serger not attempted his unauthorized edition, Bacon’s first appearance in print might have been as the author of The Advancement of Learning (1605), that bold attempt to persuade King James to initiate a total reformation of study and research in his new kingdom.[1]
[1] Vickers, Brian. "The Authenticity of Bacon's Earliest Writings." Studies in Philology 94, no. 2 (1997): 248-96. Accessed March 5, 2020. www.jstor.org/stable/4174577.
Although Bacon had a wide and diverse literary output by 1597 (enough to fill several hundred pages of Spedding’s edition of his Occasional Works), none of it had been publicly acknowledged as his composition. Indeed, it was only due to an impending plagiarization that his name finally appeared in print that year, to forestall the unauthorized publication of his Essays . . . Had Serger not attempted his unauthorized edition, Bacon’s first appearance in print might have been as the author of The Advancement of Learning (1605), that bold attempt to persuade King James to initiate a total reformation of study and research in his new kingdom.[1]
[1] Vickers, Brian. "The Authenticity of Bacon's Earliest Writings." Studies in Philology 94, no. 2 (1997): 248-96. Accessed March 5, 2020. www.jstor.org/stable/4174577.
The earliest unambiguous claim in print concerning Bacon’s use of pseudonyms occurred in 1600. Alan Stewart, co-editor of the Oxford edition of Bacon’s early writings, wrote in 2009:
[Bacon] is now believed to be the author of several anonymous or pseudonymous pieces that were published, either in manuscript or in print, in the 1590s. One of them is very similar to the Cadiz letter concocted by Essex and Cuffe: the 1598 A Letter written out of England to an English Gentleman remaining at Padua, containing a true Report of a strange Conspiracie, contriued betweene Edward Squire, lately executed for the same treason as Actor, and Richard Wallpoole a Iesuite, as Deuiser and Suborner against the person of the Queenes Maiestie, an account of the alleged Catholic plots against Elizabeth (this one focused on a poisoned pommel). Its anonymity or pseudonymity did not stop people wondering who wrote it: the following year a Catholic pamphleteer attributed this ‘smooth penned pamphlet’ to ‘M. Smokey-swynes flesh, at the instance of Sir R.C.’ Once again, we have two names: Bacon as smooth penman, secretary of state Sir Robert Cecil as commissioner.
This is rather curious, as Bacon had then only published a small volume of ten essays and some religious meditations, hardly enough for the Catholic pamphleteer to assay an attribution. At any rate, shortly after Bacon’s purported death in 1626, a volume of Latin elegies appeared, lamenting the loss of ‘a muse more choice than the nine muses’ who ‘showered the age with frequent volumes’ and ‘filled the world with works’, ‘the golden stream of eloquence, the precious gem of recondite letters’. These tributes are in the hyperbolic spirit, but half a century later Thomas Tenison (who, as Archbishop of Canterbury, crowned Queen Anne and George I) wrote soberly
those who have true skill in the works of the Lord Verulam, like great masters in painting, can tell by the design, the strength, the way of colouring, whether he was the author of this or the other piece, though his name be not to it.
Bacon published only three books in English during his life, the Essays in successively expanded editions (1597, 1612, 1625), The Advancement of Learning (1605), and The History of Henry VII (1622). However, Ben Jonson wrote in Timber, or Discoveries (1641):
He, who hath filled up all numbers and performed that in our tongue which may be compared, or preferred, either to insolent Greece or haughty Rome… So that he may be named, and stand as the mark and acme of our language.
[Bacon] is now believed to be the author of several anonymous or pseudonymous pieces that were published, either in manuscript or in print, in the 1590s. One of them is very similar to the Cadiz letter concocted by Essex and Cuffe: the 1598 A Letter written out of England to an English Gentleman remaining at Padua, containing a true Report of a strange Conspiracie, contriued betweene Edward Squire, lately executed for the same treason as Actor, and Richard Wallpoole a Iesuite, as Deuiser and Suborner against the person of the Queenes Maiestie, an account of the alleged Catholic plots against Elizabeth (this one focused on a poisoned pommel). Its anonymity or pseudonymity did not stop people wondering who wrote it: the following year a Catholic pamphleteer attributed this ‘smooth penned pamphlet’ to ‘M. Smokey-swynes flesh, at the instance of Sir R.C.’ Once again, we have two names: Bacon as smooth penman, secretary of state Sir Robert Cecil as commissioner.
This is rather curious, as Bacon had then only published a small volume of ten essays and some religious meditations, hardly enough for the Catholic pamphleteer to assay an attribution. At any rate, shortly after Bacon’s purported death in 1626, a volume of Latin elegies appeared, lamenting the loss of ‘a muse more choice than the nine muses’ who ‘showered the age with frequent volumes’ and ‘filled the world with works’, ‘the golden stream of eloquence, the precious gem of recondite letters’. These tributes are in the hyperbolic spirit, but half a century later Thomas Tenison (who, as Archbishop of Canterbury, crowned Queen Anne and George I) wrote soberly
those who have true skill in the works of the Lord Verulam, like great masters in painting, can tell by the design, the strength, the way of colouring, whether he was the author of this or the other piece, though his name be not to it.
Bacon published only three books in English during his life, the Essays in successively expanded editions (1597, 1612, 1625), The Advancement of Learning (1605), and The History of Henry VII (1622). However, Ben Jonson wrote in Timber, or Discoveries (1641):
He, who hath filled up all numbers and performed that in our tongue which may be compared, or preferred, either to insolent Greece or haughty Rome… So that he may be named, and stand as the mark and acme of our language.