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Todd Compton

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Independent historian. I got my Ph.D. in classics, then immediately wrote a book about the thirty-three plural wives of Joseph Smith, founding prophet-president of Mormonism. After this I was able to return to the theme of my dissertation, poet as scapegoat in history and myth, which appeared as Victim of the Muses: Poet as Scapegoat, from Harvard. When my parents were missionaries/tour guides at the historic Jacob Hamblin home in Santa Clara, in southern Utah, I got interested in Paiutes and Navajos in southern Utah, and ended up writing the first scholarly biography of this remarkable explorer and Indian missionary, A Frontier Life: Jacob Hamblin, Explorer and Indian Missionary. My book on the Beatles' songwriting, Who Wrote the Beatle Songs, appeared in May 2017 - it takes a close look at who really wrote each of the "Lennon-McCartney" songs, and offers a new interpretation of the Beatles' creativity.

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Fordham University

Elizabeth Hoover

University of California, Berkeley

University of Massachusetts Amherst

Simone Krüger Bridge

Liverpool John Moores University

Brian M. Hauglid

Brigham Young University

Francesco Camia

Università degli Studi "La Sapienza" di Roma

University of Toronto

Leeds Beckett University

Maria Stamatopoulou

University of Oxford

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Books by Todd Compton

ETHICS AND GHOSTS

The introduction to my anthology, "The Ethics of the Uncanny: An Anthology of Great Ghost Stories... more The introduction to my anthology, "The Ethics of the Uncanny: An Anthology of Great Ghost Stories" (Pahreah Press 2018). In this book, I choose some of the most acclaimed supernatural stories in literature and look at their ethical underpinnings. Each story has a short introduction, and an afterword that interprets the ethics of the story. I agree with Joseph Conrad that “moral discovery . . . should be the object of every tale,” including ghost stories. These stories, by people like Sheridan Le Fanu, M. R. James, Edith Wharton, Mark Twain, Rudyard Kipling, Pu Songling, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Walter de la Mare, take aim at greed, sexual misdeeds, child abuse, and judicial and political corruption.

Who Wrote the Beatle Songs? A History of Lennon-McCartney

The Beatles were arguably the most influential group in the history of popular music, in large pa... more The Beatles were arguably the most influential group in the history of popular music, in large part because of their songwriting. But their songwriting method has not been analyzed carefully. Only a few Beatle songs were 50-50 collaborations, and many were dominated by one writer or written entirely separately. To discover the truth behind the “Lennon-McCartney” attribution, Todd Compton focuses his skills as a historian to sort through and analyze much contradictory evidence and to reach a verdict on who wrote each Beatle song. This finally allows us to understand the idiosyncratic brilliance of both Lennon and McCartney. Compton finds that as these two songwriters progressed in maturity they wrote together less, which contradicts many stereotypes and myths about the Beatles before and after their breakup.

“A special book indeed: an exhaustive—and blessedly fussy—compendium of the impulses behind every Beatles (and Beatles-born) recording. Authoritative and tantalizing, it offers new insights for even the most seasoned Beatles aficionado.”
Michael Hicks, author of Sixties Rock: Garage, Psychedelic, and Other Satisfactions (1999) and Henry Cowell, Bohemian (2002).

A Frontier Life: Jacob Hamblin, Explorer and Indian Missionary

Victim of The Muses: Poet as Scapegoat, Warrior and Hero

In Sacred Loneliness: the Plural Wives of Joseph Smith

A Widow’s Tale: The 1884-1896 Diary of Helen Mar Whitney

Papers by Todd Compton

Scripture, History, and Faith: A Round Table Discussion

by Margaret Toscano, Mark Thomas, and Todd Compton

Dialogue, Dec 1, 1996

Slickrock Missions: Jacob Hamblin's Communitarian Expeditions Across the Colorado

I got interested in the social and physical history of these amazing trips across the Colorado, a... more I got interested in the social and physical history of these amazing trips across the Colorado, and this lecture is the result. I put them in the perspective of the New Western history's emphasis on collective accomplishment, rather than in the context of Frederick Jackson's Turner's emphasis on individualism in settling the West.

The Big Washout - the 1862 Flood in Santa Clara

Civilizing the Ragged Edge: the Wives of Jacob Hamblin

Becoming a Messenger of Peace: Jacob Hamblin in Tooele

Compton - The Herodotean Mantic Session at Delphi

Drafts by Todd Compton

THE BEATLES SONGS — CHRONOLOGICAL OVERVIEW WITH ADJUSTED ATTRIBUTIONS

Here is my list of songs by the Beatles, chronologically by date of release, with my adjusted att... more

ETHICS AND GHOSTS

The introduction to my anthology, "The Ethics of the Uncanny: An Anthology of Great Ghost Stories... more The introduction to my anthology, "The Ethics of the Uncanny: An Anthology of Great Ghost Stories" (Pahreah Press 2018). In this book, I choose some of the most acclaimed supernatural stories in literature and look at their ethical underpinnings. Each story has a short introduction, and an afterword that interprets the ethics of the story. I agree with Joseph Conrad that “moral discovery . . . should be the object of every tale,” including ghost stories. These stories, by people like Sheridan Le Fanu, M. R. James, Edith Wharton, Mark Twain, Rudyard Kipling, Pu Songling, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Walter de la Mare, take aim at greed, sexual misdeeds, child abuse, and judicial and political corruption.

Who Wrote the Beatle Songs? A History of Lennon-McCartney

The Beatles were arguably the most influential group in the history of popular music, in large pa... more The Beatles were arguably the most influential group in the history of popular music, in large part because of their songwriting. But their songwriting method has not been analyzed carefully. Only a few Beatle songs were 50-50 collaborations, and many were dominated by one writer or written entirely separately. To discover the truth behind the “Lennon-McCartney” attribution, Todd Compton focuses his skills as a historian to sort through and analyze much contradictory evidence and to reach a verdict on who wrote each Beatle song. This finally allows us to understand the idiosyncratic brilliance of both Lennon and McCartney. Compton finds that as these two songwriters progressed in maturity they wrote together less, which contradicts many stereotypes and myths about the Beatles before and after their breakup.

“A special book indeed: an exhaustive—and blessedly fussy—compendium of the impulses behind every Beatles (and Beatles-born) recording. Authoritative and tantalizing, it offers new insights for even the most seasoned Beatles aficionado.”
Michael Hicks, author of Sixties Rock: Garage, Psychedelic, and Other Satisfactions (1999) and Henry Cowell, Bohemian (2002).

A Frontier Life: Jacob Hamblin, Explorer and Indian Missionary

Victim of The Muses: Poet as Scapegoat, Warrior and Hero

In Sacred Loneliness: the Plural Wives of Joseph Smith

A Widow’s Tale: The 1884-1896 Diary of Helen Mar Whitney

Scripture, History, and Faith: A Round Table Discussion

by Margaret Toscano, Mark Thomas, and Todd Compton

Dialogue, Dec 1, 1996

Slickrock Missions: Jacob Hamblin's Communitarian Expeditions Across the Colorado

I got interested in the social and physical history of these amazing trips across the Colorado, a... more I got interested in the social and physical history of these amazing trips across the Colorado, and this lecture is the result. I put them in the perspective of the New Western history's emphasis on collective accomplishment, rather than in the context of Frederick Jackson's Turner's emphasis on individualism in settling the West.

The Big Washout - the 1862 Flood in Santa Clara

Civilizing the Ragged Edge: the Wives of Jacob Hamblin

Becoming a Messenger of Peace: Jacob Hamblin in Tooele

Compton - The Herodotean Mantic Session at Delphi

THE BEATLES SONGS — CHRONOLOGICAL OVERVIEW WITH ADJUSTED ATTRIBUTIONS

Here is my list of songs by the Beatles, chronologically by date of release, with my adjusted att... more