author
Elizabeth Wells Gallup
1846–1933
An educator turned literary detective, she became one of the best-known champions of the claim that Francis Bacon, not Shakespeare, wrote the plays. Her work on hidden ciphers made her a curious and controversial figure in the long history of authorship debates.
1 Audiobook
Concerning the bi-literal cypher of Francis Bacon discovered in his works
by Elizabeth Wells Gallup
About the author
Born in Paris, New York, Elizabeth Wells Gallup was an American educator who later became widely known for her role in the Baconian theory of Shakespearean authorship. She studied at Michigan State Normal College, the Sorbonne, and the University of Marburg, and spent about twenty years teaching in Michigan before serving as a high school principal.
Gallup became deeply interested in Francis Bacon and the idea that secret messages were embedded in early printed texts. In the 1890s she argued that a biliteral cipher hidden in Shakespearean typography revealed Bacon as the true author of the plays and sonnets. She announced this claim in 1895 and developed it further in her book The Bi-literal Cypher of Sir Francis Bacon.
Although mainstream scholarship did not accept her conclusions, her work drew significant attention and made her an important figure in the Shakespeare authorship controversy. She remains a fascinating example of how education, cryptography, and literary obsession could come together in one very unusual career.