Pen name
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A
pen name,
nom de plume, or
literary double, is a
pseudonym adopted by an
author. The author's real name may be known to only the publisher, or may come to be common knowledge.
Western literature
An author may use a pen name if his or her real name is likely to be
confused with that of another author or notable individual. Some authors
who regularly write in more than one genre use different pen names for
each.
Romance writer
Nora Roberts writes
erotic thrillers under the pen name J.D. Robb, and
Samuel Langhorne Clemens
used the aliases "Mark Twain" and "Sieur Louis de Conte" for different
works. Similarly, an author who writes both fiction and non-fiction
(such as the mathematician and fantasy writer Charles Dodgson, who wrote
as
Lewis Carroll) may use a pseudonym for fiction writing. Science fiction author
Harry Turtledove
has used the name H.N. Turtletaub for a number of historical novels he
has written because he and his publisher felt that the presumed lower
sales of those novels might hurt book store orders for the novels he
writes under his own name.
Occasionally a pen name is employed to avoid overexposure. Prolific authors for
pulp magazines
often had two and sometimes three short stories appearing in one issue
of a magazine; the editor would create several fictitious author names
to hide this from readers.
Robert A. Heinlein wrote stories under pseudonyms so that more of his works could be published in a single magazine.
Stephen King published four novels under the name
Richard Bachman because publishers didn't feel the public would buy more than one novel per year from a single author.
[1] Eventually, after critics found a large number of style similarities, publishers revealed Bachman's true identity.
Sometimes a pen name is used because an author believes that his name
does not suit the genre he is writing in. Western novelist Pearl Gray
dropped his first name and changed the spelling of his last name to
become
Zane Grey, because he believed that his real name did not suit the Western genre. Romance novelist
Angela Knight writes under that name instead of her actual name (Julie Woodcock) because of the
double entendre of her surname in the context of that genre.
Edward Gorey had dozens of pseudonyms, each one an
anagram of his real name.
A pen name may be shared by different writers in order to suggest continuity of authorship. Thus the
Bessie Bunter series of English boarding-school stories, initially written by the prolific
Charles Hamilton under the name Hilda Richards, was taken on by other authors who continued to use the same pen-name.
C. S. Lewis used two different pseudonyms for different reasons. He published a collection of poems (
Spirits in Bondage) and a narrative poem (
Dymer) under the pen name "Clive Hamilton", to avoid harming his reputation as a
don at
Oxford University. His book entitled
A Grief Observed, which describes his experience of bereavement, was originally released under the pseudonym "N. W. Clerk"
Essayist and poet Eric Blair adopted the pseudonym
George Orwell for most of his books, including
Animal Farm and
Nineteen Eighty Four. This was done because he felt himself to be insufficiently established in his writing career to publish under his real name.
In some forms of fiction, the pen name adopted is the name of the
lead character, to suggest to the reader that the book is a (fictional)
autobiography.
Daniel Handler used the
pseudonym Lemony Snicket to present his
A Series of Unfortunate Events books as memoirs by an acquaintance of the main characters.
Legendary comic book writer
Stan Lee
was born Stanley Martin Lieber. He adopted the pen name Stan Lee
because he intended to save his real name for more literary products
other than comic books. However, Lee's hopes for a novelistic career
never materialized; although he became arguably the most important comic
book creator in history. He legally changed his name to Stan Lee
because he had become better known under his pen name.
Some, however, do this to fit a certain theme. One famous example,
Pseudonymous Bosch, used his pen name just to expand the theme of secrecy in
The Secret Series.
Female authors
Some female authors have used pen names to ensure that their works
were accepted by publishers and/or the public. Such is the case of
Peru's famous
Clarinda,
whose work was published in the early 17th century. More often, women
have adopted masculine pen names. This was common in the 19th century,
when women were beginning to make inroads into literature but, it was
felt, would not be taken as seriously by readers as male authors. For
example, Mary Ann Evans wrote under the pen name
George Eliot; and Amandine Aurore Lucile Dupin, Baronne Dudevant, used the pseudonym
George Sand.
Charlotte,
Emily and
Anne Brontë published under the names Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell respectively. French-Savoyard writer and poet
Amélie Gex chose to publish as Dian de Jeânna ("John, son of Jane") during the first half of her career.
Karen Blixen's very successful
Out of Africa (1937) was originally published under the pen name Isak Dinesen.
Victoria Benedictsson, one of the most famous Swedish authors of the 19th century,
[citation needed] wrote under the name Ernst Ahlgren.
More recently, women who write in genres normally written by men sometimes choose to use initials, such as
K. A. Applegate,
P. N. Elrod,
D. C. Fontana,
S. E. Hinton,
G. A. Riplinger,
J. D. Robb, and
J. K. Rowling. Alternatively, they may use a unisex pen name, such as
Robin Hobb (the second pen name of novelist
Margaret Astrid Lindholm Ogden).
Collective names
A
collective name, also known as a
house name, is sometimes used with
series fiction
published under one pen name even though more than one author may have
contributed to the series. In some cases the first books in the series
were written by one writer, but subsequent books were written by
ghost writers. For instance, many of the later books in
The Saint adventure series were not written by
Leslie Charteris, the series' originator. Similarly,
Nancy Drew mystery books are published as though they were written by
Carolyn Keene,
The Hardy Boys books are published as the work of
Franklin W. Dixon, and
The Bobbsey Twins series are credited to
Laura Lee Hope, although several authors have been involved in each series.
Collaborative authors may have also their works published under a
single pen name. Frederic Dannay and Manfred B. Lee published their
mystery novels and stories under the pen name
Ellery Queen (as well as publishing the work of
ghost-writers under the same name).
Cherith Baldry,
Kate Cary, and
Victoria Holmes wrote the
Warriors series under the pseudonym of
Erin Hunter to keep their readers from searching all over the library for their books.
[citation needed] The writers of
Atlanta Nights, a deliberately bad book intended to embarrass the publishing firm
PublishAmerica,
[citation needed] used the pen name Travis Tea. Sometimes multiple authors will write related books under the same pseudonym; examples include
T. H. Lain in fiction.
[citation needed]
Nicolas Bourbaki is the collective pseudonym under which a group of (mainly
French) 20th-century
mathematicians wrote a series of books presenting an exposition of modern advanced
mathematics, beginning in 1935. With the goal of founding all of mathematics on
set theory, the group strove for utmost
rigour and generality, creating some new terminology and concepts along the way.
[citation needed]
In 2007, three Slovenian artists legally changed their names to
Janez Janša,
the Slovenia’s economic-liberal, conservative prime minister at the
time. When publicly asked whether this gesture was of an affirmative or
subversive nature, they claimed they did it for "personal reasons". Most
of their works, including art exhibitions, theatrical pieces, and
publications, have since been signed under this name.
[citation needed]
Suba is an example of collective pen name in
Tamil literature.
[citation needed] Kozma Prutkov is an example of collective pen name in Russian literature.
[citation needed]
Concealment of identity
A pseudonym may be used to protect the writer for exposé books about espionage or crime. Former SAS soldier
Andy McNab used a pseudonym for his book about a failed
SAS mission titled
Bravo Two Zero. The name
Ibn Warraq has been used by dissident Muslim authors. Author
Brian O'Nolan used the pen names
Flann O'Brien and
Myles na gCopaleen for his novels and journalistic writing from the 1940s to the 1960s because Irish
civil servants were not allowed at that time to publish works under their own names.
[citation needed] The identity of the enigmatic twentieth century novelist
B. Traven has never been conclusively revealed, despite thorough research.
[citation needed]
The
Histoire d'O (
The Story of O), an
erotic novel of
sadomasochism and
sexual slavery, was written by an editorial secretary with a reputation for near-prudery who used the pseudonym
Pauline Réage.
For reasons unknown, but perhaps to escape the notice of English authorities, the author Robert Noonan chose the name
Robert Tressell as his pseudonym to write the novel
The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists.[citation needed]
Alice Bradley Sheldon had a multiplicity of reasons for writing under the pen name of
James Tiptree, Jr.: she was a woman writing in the heavily male-dominated genre of
science fiction;
she was a bisexual woman who may have wanted to avoid the inherent
biases of her readers; and she was a career intelligence officer, first
in the
Army Air Corps and then in the early years of the
CIA, for whom concealment was a way of life.
[citation needed]
After
Stephen King's pen name
Richard Bachman got released to the public, King said that Bachman had "died of
cancer".
[citation needed] After this, King began writing most of his stories under his own name.
[citation needed] The event of King's pen name's being released helped conceive another novel,
The Dark Half (1989).
[citation needed]
