ABSTRACT
Thomas Hardy, Walter Scott, and Joseph Conrad all wrote books that were partly handwritten and partly dictated. Conrad’s case is more complex than those of Hardy and Scott, but all of them avoid the complications of chronological drift, reduce the number of other relevant variables, and minimize the possibility of an incremental increase (or decrease) in the effect of the mode change over time. Multiple analyses based on multiple variables, including analyses of dialogue and narration separately, show that the styles of Hardy, Scott, and Conrad are surprisingly durable to the influence of changes in mode of composition.
