An attempt to identify the author of the _Deformities_ was made by George Steevens when it appeared. In a letter to William Cole dated 14 May 1782, he says that it was "written by a Club of Caledonian Wits."[5] The _Critical Review_ for August 1782 (LIV, 140) surmised that "the pamphlet ... is apparently written by some angry Caledonian, who, warmed with the deepest resentment for some real or supposed injury, gives vent to his indignation, and treats every part of Dr. Johnson's character with the utmost asperity." A month later, the _Gentleman's Magazine_ (LII [September 1782], 439), "reciting the circumstance" of the origin of the _Deformities_, contended that it was a revenge pamphlet inspired by an anti-Ossian publication by William Shaw ("Nadir" Shaw, in the _Deformities_), who "'denied the existence of Gaelic poetry....'" "Dr. Johnson was his patron; and THEREFORE this Essayist, 'by fair and copious quotations from Dr. Johnson's ponderous performances, has attempted to illustrate'" his extraordinary defects. And in February 1783 (LXVIII, 185-186), the _Monthly Review_ briefly noted: This seems to be the production of some ingenious but angry Scotchman, who has taken great pains to prove, what all the world knows, that there are many exceptionable passages in the writings of Dr. Johnson. There are, however, few spots in this literary luminary now pointed out that have not been discovered before. So that the present map must be considered rather as a monument of the delineator's malignity, than of his wit.--His _personalities_ seem to indicate personal provocation; though perhaps it may be all pure _nationality_. Though Boswell mentions the pamphlet and quotes a letter in which Johnson comments on it,[6] neither he nor any of his editors before L. F. Powell try to identify the incensed author. In 1815 Robert Anderson said that the _Deformities_, "an invidious contrast to 'The Beauties of Johnson,'" is "the production of Mr. Thomson Callender, nephew of Thomson the poet."[7]