Spanning across literary genres and historical contexts, pen names or pseudonyms have been adopted for a plethora of reasons. Ranging from variations of an author’s real name (see, J. R. R. Tolkien for John Tolkien), to completely invented names, (George Orwell instead of Eric Blair), they allow authors to alter their identity.
Historically, there are a myriad of cases of women adopting masculine pen names to escape gender bias or meet readers’ expectations for the genres they were writing for. A poignant example of this is Charlotte Brontë, author of Jane Eyre, and her sisters Emily and Anne, becoming Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell respectively. Charlotte later explained, “we did not like to declare ourselves women… we had a vague impression that authoresses are liable to be looked on with prejudice.” By adopting these pseudonyms they were able to write about “un-feminine” topics and avoid sexist criticism.
However, the use of a pen name of the opposite gender was not a one-way system and was not necessarily always about concealing identity. William Sharp wrote works such as The Mountain Lovers and Green Fire under the name Fiona Macleod which he claimed allowed him to explore his more “feminine” qualities. Interestingly, Fiona Macleod became much more than simply a pseudonym. Through enlisting his sister to write multiple letters, in her feminine handwriting, Sharp created and then entered the consciousness of Fiona as a reclusive, well-educated, sharp young woman.
Alongside allowing the exploration of identity, pen names have also allowed the necessary concealing of authors. Hector Hugh Murno used the pen name Saki to publish works such as the parliamentary parody of Alice in Wonderland called The Westminster Alice and other mischievous, macabre tales which satirised his Edwardian culture and contrasted to societal expectations of him as the son of a British colonial official. This practice is occasionally still crucial now as illustrated by David Cornwell’s necessary adoption of the name John Le Carré whilst he worked for the British Intelligence.
A common function of pseudonyms today is to allow authors to write under multiple genres and distance from their previous work. A glaring example of this is J. K. Rowling writing under Robert Galbraith to publish The Cormoran Strike crime fiction series. She claimed she “really wanted to go back to the beginning of a writing career in this new genre, to work without hype of expectation and to receive totally unvarnished feedback.”
In the modern-day, pen names are slightly going out of style. The rise of technology and invasive media means anonymity is very hard to maintain, and, whilst gender bias is of course not completely eradicated, there is less of a need to write under a pen name to conceal gender. However, there are definitely authors still using pen names, most frequently to write across multiple genres, but also because of the distinctive appeal of creating a literary alter ego or even simply using a unique, interesting name.
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