My path to becoming an Oxfordian began in 1995, when I came across a book by Richard Whalen titled “Shakespeare: WHO WAS HE? The Oxford Challenge to the Bard of Avon, published the previous year. Up until that point, while having strong interests in literature and music (I collect post-World War II fiction and poetry, especially that by the Beat Generation and LPs of the great conductors—Furtwängler, Carlos Kleiber, Monteux, Barbirolli, Mitropolous, etc.) I unquestioningly adhered to the conventional wisdom that Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare. In his concise, well written, and evenhanded presentation of the evidence, Whalen convinced me that orthodox scholars are wrong and that Edward de Vere was the true author of the poetry and plays published under the name William Shakespeare.
I began reading and collecting books about Edward de Vere and the Authorship Question, beginning with the four-volume set edited and published, in 1974-1975, by Ruth Loyd Miller (no relation) containing “Shakespeare” Identified and Poems by Edward de Vere by J. Thomas Looney (Volume 1), Oxfordian Vistas (Volume 2), A Hundreth Sundrie Flowres (the 3rd book), and Hidden Allusions in Shakespeare’s Plays by Eva Turner Clark. (Ruth Miller also sent me directly, along with other material, a mimeographed copy of B. M. Ward’s out-of-print 400-page biography, The Seventeenth Earl of Oxford.)
I began writing articles for LewRockwell.com on various medical and non-medical subjects in 2001, beginning with “A Jeffersonian View of the Civil War,” and, after 9/11, “A Fourteen Point Plan for a Post-Wilsonian America.” Some address power, political and economic, viewed from multiple perspectives. Three are “Pursuing Truth on the Kennedy Assassinations,” “Wagner’s Ring on the Lust for Power,” and “On Compassion.”
Ongoing study of the Shakespeare Authorship Question has convinced me, especially after reading The Monument by Hank Whittemore and Hidden in Plain Sight: The True History Revealed in Shake-speares Sonnets by Peter Rush, that state power lies at the root of this question. I have written paper, titled “State Power and Shakespeare: Fake News Disguising its True History,” which will also be published on LewRockwell.com. I have archived all the articles mentioned above on my own website, donaldmiller.com.
— Donald Miller
“How I Became an Oxfordian” is edited by Bob Meyers. You may submit your essay on this topic (500 words or less in an editable format such as MS Word), along with a digital photo of yourself, to: communications@shakespeareoxfordfellowship.org. Also include a sentence about yourself (e.g., “John J. Smith is a businessman in San Francisco.”)
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