A rose by any other name, can you tell me about authors' pseudomyms

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A. Aliases, noms de plume, pen names: writers have been masking their true identity since writing was invented, and more often than not, the reading public will be unaware that an author is hiding behind another name.

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Q. Why do it
A. Many reasons might prompt an author to choose a pseudonym. The most obvious one is anonymity: if being a writer doesn't square with your other activities or the nature of the material is likely to raise eyebrows or tarnish others by association, or even if you write in two or more mutually exclusive genres and you don't want one to be associated with the other, then you have a prime reason for adopting another handle. Few people have heard of the Reverend Charles Lutwidge Dodgson's scholarly works on such arcane subjects as croquet and applied mathematics, but almost everyone has enjoyed Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

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Dodgson didn't want his 'serious' works confused with his writings for children, and as a professor of mathematics at Oxford and a man of the cloth, it may not have sat well with his employers if he was widely known to be Carroll

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Or, if a name is particularly appropriate for the subject matter or image of the author, there is a case for a change. 'Mark Twain' was a cry used by riverboat navigators on the Mississippi. As an author whose most celebrated creations, Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer, spent a great deal of his time on or about the river, it must have seemed an apt pseudonym for Samuel Langhorne Clemens to pick.

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Again, before the 20th century it was very difficult for a woman to get anything published, and many a famous names changed sex or became of a non-specific gender in order to get around the conventions of female modesty of the time. Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell (Charlotte, Emily and Ann Bront�) are three such; George Eliot (Mary Ann or Marian Cross, n�e Evans) another. Even Jane Austen was originally published anonymously.

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Also, if your given name is just too difficult or hard to remember, then a snappy alias can work wonders. Francois-Marie Arouet may not mean much to you, but, known by his pen name, Voltaire is a giant of European culture.

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Q. Who's who
A. Here are a few well-known modern authors along with their alter egos, both real and invented (real names first):

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Susan Wittig Albert - Robin Paige
Kingsley Amis - Robert Markham
Anthony and Peter Shaffer - Peter Antony
Paul Auster - Paul Benjamin
Stephen King - Richard Bachman
Marion Chesney - Helen Crampton, Ann Fairfax, Jennie Tremaine, Charlotte Ward, M.C. Beaton
Cecil Day-Lewis - Nicholas Blake
Gore Vidal - Edgar Box
Evan Hunter - Ed McBain, Curt Cannon, Hunt Collins, Richard Marsten
David Cornwell - John Le Carr�
Thomas Keneally - William Coyle
Koontz, Dean R. - David Axton, Brian Coffey, Deanna Dwyer, K.R. Dwyer, John Hill, Leigh Nichols, Anthony North, Richard Paige, Owen West
Kenneth Millar - John Macdonald, Ross Macdonald, John Ross Macdonald
Chloe Anthony Wofford - Toni Morrison
Edith Mary Pargeter - Ellis Peters
Ruth Rendell - Barbara Vine
Robert Ludlum - Jonathon Ryder

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Take a look at these for more names:

http://www.bookbrowser.com/Pseudonyms/
http://www.newandusedbooks.com/PSEUDONYMS.CFM

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By Simon Smith