Junius was the pseudonym of a writer who contributed a series of political letters critical of the government of George III to the Public Advertiser, from 21 January 1769 to 21 January 1772 as well as several other London newspapers such as the London Evening Post. Charges were brought against several people, of whom two were convicted and sentenced. The pseudonymous Junius was aware of the advantages of concealment. Two generations after the appearance of the letters, speculation as to the authorship of Junius was rife. Sir Philip Francis is now generally, but not universally, believed to be the author.
Current scholarly views According to Alan Frearson there is scholarly consensus in favour of Sir Philip Francis; he divides the evidence into four classes, and reports that each class "points most strongly to Francis". This scholarly theory has been called the "Franciscan theory", at least since Abraham Hayward's More About Junius: The Franciscan Theory Unsound (1868). Numerous subsequent publications have been written by those sceptical about the identification with Francis. John Cannon, editor of an edition of the Letters published in 1978, adhered to the Franciscan theory. As Francesco Cordasco puts it, "while the Franciscan theory has recently enjoyed new life, it remains contested and impossible to demonstrate categorically". In 2026, Harvard professor Danielle Allen argues in two chapters of her biography of Charles Lennox, 3rd Duke of Richmond that Junius was a secret consortium of political writers, organized by the so-called "radical duke", to criticize the government and the monarch.
Early guesses Joseph Parkes, author with Herman Merivale of the Memoirs of Sir Philip Francis (1867), gave a list of more than forty persons who had been supposed to be Junius.
Other candidates There have been other hypotheses put forward. In most cases the attribution is based on nothing more than a vague guess.
Notes
References Attribution This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Hannay, David (1911). "Junius". In Chisholm, Hugh (ed.). Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 15 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 557–559.
Further reading
Bowyer, Tony Harold, A Bibliographical Examination of the Earliest Editions of the Letters of Junius. Charlottesville, Va.: University of Virginia Press (1957) Ellegård, Alvar, A Statistical Method for Determining Authorship: the Junius Letters 1769–1772. Göteborg, 1962. Gothenburg Studies in English; 13. Ellegård, Alvar, Who Was Junius? Almquist and Wiksell, Stockholm, (1962); discussed by [1] Cannon, John, The Letters of Junius. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978. ISBN 0-19-812455-4. Katritzky, Linde, Johnson and The Letters of Junius; New Perspectives on an Old Enigma Peter Lang Publishing, New York (1996). Ars interpretandi; Vol. 5. ISBN 0-8204-3106-0. Cordasco, Francesco, Junius, a Bibliography of the Letters of Junius; with a Checklist of Junian Scholarship and Related Studies. Fairview, NJ [e.a.]: Junius-Vaughn Press, 1986. Chabot, C. (1871). The Handwriting of Junius Professionally Investigated. London: John Murray.
External links "Junius collection at Mcgill University". McGill.ca.
