Pen Names

The stories behind why an author chose their literary alias can be just as compelling as the works that they wrote.

Writers publish under pen names for a variety of reasons. Some use them to fit in while others employ them to stand out from the crowd. Pen Names traces the history of literary aliases from the nineteenth century to the present day through forty novelists, poets, and playwrights. These include famous pseudonymous writers such as George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans), Currer Bell (Charlotte Brontë), Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson), George Orwell (Eric Blair), crime writers such as Josephine Tey and Nicci French, and those lesser-known writers whose real identities have been obscured behind their literary aliases. Pen Names also explores the wide range of motivations for taking on new names, including gender, the use of pseudonyms for different genres, and writing as a team. Collectively, the stories in this book give the audience unusual insights into authors, publishers, and readers over the last two hundred years.