Nom de Plume: A Literary History of Pseudonyms, Secret Identities, and the Hidden Lives of Famous Authors

by Carmela Ciuraru

A literary history of eighteen authors from the 19th and 20th centuries and their famous pseudonyms.Exploring the fascinating stories of more than a dozen authorial impostors across several centuries and cultures, Carmela Ciuraru plumbs the creative process and the darker, often crippling aspects of fame.Only through the protective guise of Lewis Carroll could a shy, half-deaf Victorian mathematician at Oxford feel free to let his imagination run wild. The three weird sisters from Yorkshire—the Brontës—produced instant bestsellers that transformed them into literary icons, yet they wrote under the cloak of male authorship. Bored by her aristocratic milieu, a cigar-smoking, cross-dressing baroness rejected the rules of propriety by having sexual liaisons with men and women alike, publishing novels and plays under the name George Sand. Highly accessible and engaging, these provocative stories reveal the complex motives of writers who harbored secret identities—sometimes playfully, sometimes with terrible anguish and tragic consequences. Part detective story, part exposé, part literary history, Nom de Plume is an absorbing psychological meditation on identity and creativity.Praise for Nom de PlumeA San Francisco Chronicle Best Book of the Year“Each page affords sparkling facts and valuable insights into . . . the eternally mysterious, often tormented interface between life and literature.” —Elif Batuman“A richly documented literary excursion into the inner, secret lives of some of our favorite writers.” —Joyce Carol Oates“You are on the second to last page . . . and wishing you weren’t because this book is such great fun.” —San Francisco Chronicle“[An] engrossing, well-paced literary history. . . . It’s biography on the quick, and done well.” —Bookforum

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Books About Books, Biography, Writing, Microhistory, Biography Memoir

373 pages, Kindle Edition

First published April 1, 2011

About the author

Carmela Ciuraru is the author of Nom de Plume: A (Secret) History of Pseudonyms, and her anthologies include First Loves: Poets Introduce the Essential Poems That Captivated and Inspired Them and Solitude Poems. She is a member of PEN American and the National Book Critics Circle, and she has been interviewed on The Today Show and by newspapers and radio stations internationally. She lives in New York City.

Reviews

[Celia · Rating 5 out of 5]

I know this type of book is not for everyone: 18 biographies written in 16 chapters (the three Brontes take up 1 chapter). But it is not dry; in fact, it is very entertaining.
The book describes these 18 authors, the pseudonyms or heteronyms they chose, why they picked those names and what they wrote.
I became interested in this book because of a challenge I am completing: read a book by an author who wrote under more than one name.
Most of the stories are sad, but are enlightening. I also learned of more than 1 author I had never heard of and they have been added to my TR list.
I strongly recommend this book to anyone who wants to learn more about the those who have contributed much to our favorite pastime, reading.
BTW, the book I chose to read for the challenge was Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll. He was a mathematician and wrote math treatise under his birth name Charles Dodgson. It still blows my mind that a man who was shy and wrote bland math books could be so imaginative and fantastical!
Happy Reading!!

[Janine · Rating 5 out of 5]

HarperCollins kindly mailed me an advanced reader's copy of this book through Goodreads giveaway, and my full review should be posted in a few days.

But since I do have a moment, I will insert a quick disclaimer here and recommend that you do not, as I did, select this book as your reading material for the ferry ride from Juneau to Haines, Alaska on a beautiful June day. While the others on board were oohing and ahhing and even cheering at a pod of humpback whales and some orcas and porpoises that were all swimming and leaping around in the waters surrounding the ship, I was hard-pressed to look up from the pages of this book.

Whoops.

[Rachel · Rating 1 out of 5]

My review is on the introduction and first 3.5 chapters only as I did not finish reading the rest of them.

The subject matter is interesting, and the beginning of the book and chapter on the Bronte sisters held my interest. I felt connected to the sister authors through Ciuraru's storytelling and learned things I did not know. The beginning of the next chapter on George Sand was intriguing, but by the end I had gotten thoroughly confused on the timeline of her life and when she had done what. Figuring my neurotic need for linear chronology was my problem, I started the next chapter on George Eliot vowing to pay closer attention to follow along. But it only got more painful to read as I noticed things like the same quote being used two paragraphs in a row, or couldn't understand why certain details of George Eliot's life had been included.

Finally, I was completely turned off by the beginning of chapter 4 on Lewis Carroll which broke narrative form when the author turned unexpectedly conversational, but then immediately slipped back into the formal biographical writing: "Show of hands if you've never heard of Alice in Wonderland. That's what I thought." This seems inconsistent and like questionable editing. I kept waiting for the opposite statement that should surely follow "that's what I thought,"--something like "but I was wrong!"--except in the ensuing 4 pages I read, it never came.

There might be gems in the rest of the book, and these sorts of things might not get in the way of some people reading the mini-biographies, but they were enough to make me put the book down. The sage librarian Nancy Pearl says you are allowed to put down a book when you've read 100-[your age] pages, and I got to that page so I stopped.

This book did teach me a few new words, though, like "execrable", but I found it a bit harsh applied to a Jewel album (that I'd never hear of and thus have no opinion on) that the internet tells me received mixed reviews at worst and still managed to get to #8 on the charts. This was the final deal-breaker for me as I felt it was too strong of an opinion asserted by the author to make me feel I was reading an impartial biography.

[Katherine Cowley · Rating 3 out of 5]

I would always tell my writing students that the beginning and end of a work are the most important: the beginning determines the perspective with which you read, and the ending determines how you leave the book feeling about it. Nom de Plume had an excellent start, and for much of the book I loved it. Ciuraru takes a fascinating look at the biographies of some of the most famous authors of the 19th and 20th centuries who used pseudonyms, exploring why they felt the need to hide behind a different name, and what it allowed them to write. Beginning with the Bronte sisters and moving through authors from George Orwell to Isak Denisen, Nom de Plume explores how each of us, to a certain extent, try on other identities in order to tell stories.

I admit, the end of the book turned me off. The final chapter (which I only skimmed) details the work and life of an author who wrote what is apparently the most famous porn novel of all time. It seems that in the guise of advocating open-mindedness and societal progress in a world of moral decay, Ciuraru suggests that this porn author represents the culmination of pseudonyms. While it's quite true that many of those who used pseudonyms lived troubled lives (take O Henry, for instance) or did not follow accepted cultural morals (George Eliot lived openly with a married man) it feels like Ciuraru has moved beyond biography to push for homosexuality, pornography, infidelity, and other things which, while they may have been practiced by great authors to produce good fiction, do not fit with my world view. Embrace everything, live however you want, she seems to say through her biographies; not only is this opposed to my religious and moral code, I believe that doing so is detrimental to families and societies.

I still feel like much of this book was well worth reading. I liked reading about authors in this format and now have a more lengthy list of books on my "to read" list. Yet I also feel a little disappointed, cheated even, by the author.

[Johanna · Rating 5 out of 5]

Think you know about your favorite authors? Guess again! Nom de Plume offers a fascinating look at some of my favorite writers of all time, as well as a compelling introduction to some authors that I hadn't heard of before. Incredibly well written and just plain fun to read -each chapter is titled with some outrageous fact about the author featured in it; as I came to the end of a chapter and meant to set the book down, I found myself getting sucked into the next chapter, and then the next, and the next. I laughed, I cried, I cringed in disgust, but I just couldn't put the book down. I even felt a little sad when I finished reading it, wishing there was more- I would love for the author to write a sequel, perhaps including some more of my favorite Noms de Plume- Saki (Hector Hugh Munro), Agatha Christie (Mary Westmacott), Ayn Rand (Alisa Zinov'yevna Rosenbaum), to name a few.
Nom de Plume is a fantastic book that I'd recommend to just about anyone. Wonderful!


I have recieved this book for free through Goodreads First Reads.

[Kat · Rating 2 out of 5]

Some of the stories were interesting. I didn't know a lot of the authors. It is kind of like reading a bunch of mini biographies, so if you are into that you would probably enjoy it. There was nothing really connecting the stories together (besides the fact that they all used pseudonyms). I found the intro kind of dull and scattered and there wasn't even a conclusion section. I would have liked more coherent discussion about why people choose pseudonyms and how that compares to today's information age where it may be harder to hide. The themes for using pseudonyms were more interesting to me than all of the biographical elements.

At one point in Plath's story the author said something like "and we all know how she felt about her father. And if you didn't, go read her poem Daddy." Um, no, how about you take a sentence or less to tell me instead of assuming I know everything you do?

[verbava · Rating 2 out of 5]

назва тут оманлива, бо це книжка не про псевдоніми, а про вісімнадцятьох (сестри бронте в одному розділі) авторок і авторів, які якось колись ховалися під псевдонімами. не дуже добре структурована – нелогічні переходи від одної теми до іншої в межах одного абзацу, повторювані цитати, брак загальної завершеності. може, текст і був запланований як дослідження псевдонімів, але по дорозі виявилося, що це буде занадто багато роботи.

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting collection of authors, some of which I knew and some that were strangers. I did make me want to read some of their work

[Angelc]

4.5 Stars

I really enjoy reading non-fiction, as they say-truth is often stranger than fiction. I especially like non-fiction when it's not too dry, and the writer makes the stories come to life. I can definitely say that this book was a quick and fun read. One thing that kept the book moving right along was that it consisted of a different chapter for each different writer. It was almost like reading short stories. Of course, all of the stories were connected by the same theme-the pseudonym, and the duality of self and personality that occurs along with it.

I admit that I was most interested in the stories of favorites of mine, Lewis Carroll and Mark Twain. I learned some new info about both of these writers. I also found most of the other writers' stories very interesting as well. I know a lot of readers will be interested in the Bronte sisters' stories.

For some of the writers, I was very familiar with their work, like George Orwell and O. Henry, but I really didn't know anything about their personal lives. This was a great starting point in learning the bios of many great writers all at once. Another great thing about this book is that now I'm really interested in reading books from some of the authors whose books I haven't read before.

The author has a great way of getting the reader's attention at the start of each chapter with a statement about one of the eccentricities of the upcoming writer. These were fun and a great way to entice the reader into reading the next chapter.

Overall, a great read with lesser known and sometimes scandalous stories about some very influential authors.


book sent by publisher in exchange for honest review

reviewed for http://inthehammockblog.blogspot.com

[Tiffany · Rating 5 out of 5]

A collection of histories/mini-biographies of famous authors/pen names. Included are:
Anne, Charlotte, and Emily Bronte / Acton, Currer, and Ellis Bell
Aurore Dupin / George Sand
Marian Evans / George Eliot
Charles Dodgson / Lewis Carroll
Samuel Clemens / Mark Twain
William Sydney Porter / O. Henry (I've never read O. Henry and the only thing I know about his stories is the general theme of "The Gift of the Magi," but for some reason I always thought he was Asian from centuries ago. Imagine my surprise when the story says he was born in North Carolina in 1862!)
Fernando Pessoa / multiple personalities (not pen names; personalities)
Eric Blair / George Orwell
Karen Blixen / Isak Dinesen
Sylvia Plath / Victoria Lucas
Henry Yorke / Henry Green
Roman Kacew / Romain Gary / Emile Ajar
Alice Sheldon / James Tiptree Jr.
Georges Simenon / Christian Brulls, et. al.
Patricia Highsmith / Claire Morgan
Anne Desclos / Dominique Aury / Pauline Reage

All of the stories are interesting, but some -- like Fernando Pessoa and Alice Sheldon -- are absolutely FASCINATING!

[Stacy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was very excited to get the opportunity to read this as a GoodReads Firstread. Having read Alice I have been I was already fascinated by the story behind the authors. This book is a must read for anyone who has read the Brontes, Lewis Carroll, or Plath. I was very fascinated by the story of O. Henry, especially since I either did not know or had forgotten that he had lived in Austin (my hometown) and that I had lived down the street from O.Henry Middle School. This book was at times slow but still highly enjoyable. It has made me want to read some of the classics I have missed along the way and reread a few as well. If you like memoirs, you need to read this book.

[Mayda · Rating 5 out of 5]

Carmela Ciuraru paints a fascinating picture of authors and their pseudonyms in Nom de Plume. This well-researched book contains detailed information about both well known and lesser known writers. More than a biography, you will discover why authors chose the names they did, as well as interesting facts about the personal and sometimes tragic events in their lives. You may look at literature differently after reading this enlightening collection of astonishing stories. I received this book free through Goodreads First Reads.

[Vivian · Rating 4 out of 5]

A history of authors and their pen names - from people seriously hiding their identities to authors just goofing off. It is really facinating how so many authors needed or were subsumed by the alternate identities. A light writing style kept the book moving along, but by the end it really had me thinking.

[Vashti · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book. It is filled with interesting facts on the lives of various authors. It also inspired me to look up some of their work!

[Yvonne]

So glad I won a First Read giveaway copy -- I can't wait to read it!

[Lit Folio · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have a particular interest in the subject of disguising one's identity--especially when it comes to writing. We live in a very public world where Twitter 'tweets can make or break you--worldwide-in a matter of minutes. What you say can be held against you, and I often face this challenge, remembering that most of my comments on news sites and the like are always done in the safety of concealment. (as I am doing right here!)

Anonymity gives one a freedom and flexibility and nowhere is this more evident than in producing works of fiction. All of the authors here are interesting human beings. From the Bronte sisters to the true person behind the 'O. Henry' moniker, there were considerable reasons for seeking such. The author here intrigues with delicious tidbits on the private lives of these writers and this adds an unexpected 'umph' to the telling of these little known tales. Patricia Highsmith has always been an enigma to me, not without dark implications, and because she was gay at a time when this was verboten, we see why she wisely chose to disguise herself in her best known work, THE PRICE OF SALT. There are many fascinating revelations on all of the writers discussed here, their personal lives and then some makes for gratifying reading. Wholeheartedly recommend.

[Two Readers in Love]

"Ciuraru takes readers on a comprehensive and engaging journey through the minds and careers of more than a dozen famous authors -- including George Sand, Mark Twain, and George Orwell -- who wrote under assumed names. Along the way, we discover not only their reasons, both practical and deeply personal, for obscuring their true identities, but also the peculiar effects that using a pseudonym had on their lives."

[M. K. Jacobs · Rating 3 out of 5]

I picked this up because of the chapter on the Brontës, which was very well done. There were some interesting tidbits about other authors, too, but largely, this felt unfocused and meandered far from the topic: pen names. Many of the authors described here were obscure, and the details chosen to highlight were similarly random and gender/sexuality was definitely overemphasized. I wanted to know more about pseudonym usage, not how each of the authors who used them felt about their gender.

[Sunil · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Names complicate," saith Henry Green née Henry Vincent Yorke, himself chronicled here. Shame of some sort or another or simple mischievousness seems to be the impetus behind many of the great pen names -it's not as though these people were risking death by writing what they did, say, in the manner of a Procopius or Anna Akhmatova. Interesting reasons nonetheless.

[Bea Elwood · Rating 2 out of 5]

I only read the biographies of the authors I cared about but I feel like it gave me a sense for the other half of the book. Not really sure if this was an important historical reflection on why (mostly women) felt the need to use nom de plumes but it was a finely written collection of bios so if you're into that enjoy.

[Olivia · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked this book quite a lot. Can’t really criticize the content of the book as it is biographical, but the author’s way of writing gave the book a modern and upbeat appeal. The interesting take on exploring pseudonyms was very fun to read about. Only complaint about the book is that near there end I did start to feel a bit bored by what seemed to be a repetitive description for the writers.

[Jenny · Rating 2 out of 5]

The premise of this book is fascinating -- readers are promised a history of pseudonyms through literary history.

What we are given is a series of short biographical sketches written by someone who appears to be obsessed with the authors' sex lives. She manages to make their lives appear dull, and focuses on on how miserable everyone must have been.

Not a book I would recommend.

[Ashley Lauren · Rating 2 out of 5]

Maybe I just went in with the wrong expectations. I thought this would be somehow more about the process of a psuedonym itself - a kind of history or biography, or something on the IDEA of a pseudonym. Instead it was mini-biographies of people who used pseudonyms. Just not what I was looking for.

[Herb · Rating 5 out of 5]

A lovely, and surprisingly important, book.

Arthur Koestler is quoted as saying, “To want to meet an author because you like his books is as ridiculous as wanting to meet the goose because you like pate de foie gras.” But in this age of reality TV and Dancing with the Stars and endless couches on endless talk shows, we don't have much patience for privacy any more, and the Bell brothers e-mail would have been hacked in two weeks to discover the Bronte sisters instead, all brought out to be guests on The View so that the insatiable public could have "the real story."

But the real real story is the work itself, and Carmela Ciuraru shows us how the pseudonym can make a body of work possible by freeing its author from the blunt facts of her or his own genealogy. The science fiction writer James Tiptree Jr. (actually Alice Sheldon, who'd taken the name Tiptree from a brand of jam) wrote in her diary "At last I have what every child wants, a real secret life... nobody else's damn secret but MINE." As Tiptree, she wrote prolifically and successfully, unencumbered by her own gender and freed from the expectations of others.

Anne Desclos, or maybe Dominque Aury, or maybe Pauline Reage, wrote an erotic letter to her married lover, and The Story of O captivated three generations of readers who never really needed to know anything outside the walls of Roissy. Eric Blair, the son of minor aristocrats, had to disappear to write about poverty and political oppression, and George Orwell arose in his absence.

But privacy is only one motive for the pseudonym. So many of the writers Ciuraru shows us had feelings of self-negation from early childhood. A few had signs of what we would now call gender dysphoria. A few felt as though their families, and the artificially applied names chosen by mother or father, were never really their own. A few, like the Bronte sisters, knew they'd never be accepted as women writers (just as 150 years later, the high school English teacher Thomas Elmer Huff had to take on names such as Jennifer Wilde and Katherine St. Clair to succeed in writing romance novels). And a few felt that it was only some other person who could speak the secrets that they themselves could never say.

[Lisa Oakes · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating book!

[Tamara · Rating 5 out of 5]

Interesting for anyone who is well-read or aims to be. Also, a great way to come up with a reading list since it mentions each author's reading preferences.

[wonka · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very intriguing and informative, occasionally inspiring in certain stories, glad I picked up this book.

[Craig · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is one of the first books I've read that went from being two stars, to four, and then back down to three. In fact, I don't think a single other book caused me to change opinion so many times. From the introduction, you're drawn into the fascinating reasoning behind pseudonyms and their use in popular culture. Whilst short, these few pages do a great job at touching upon what it means to a content creator to adopt a pseudonym, be it for legal reasons or just a personal quirk. Whilst the book itself primarily focuses on authors, these points are broad enough to apply to musicians and directors too - what drives an individual to go by another name entirely? Just as quickly as the introduction comes, it fades to make way for individual chapters each dedicated to an author with a history attached to their choices. From Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) to Mary Ann Evans (George Eliot), we're taken overleaf and shown the often tortured backgrounds and struggles behind some of the lauded authors known to literature today. There's a lot to be learned here, and as the book goes through each author (chronologically too, which is always nice) you get to know just what drives an author to write under another name entirely.

However, this came as a bit of a shock. I knew nothing of the book when it came, and I'd even reached the halfway point before I noticed the copy I had was an unproofed one, not for sale and all of that business. I didn't even read the blurb. Fascinated as I am with pseudonyms, this was in my Amazon basket as quickly as it was on my to-read list. I simply wasn't expecting detailed author biographies given the tone of the introduction, which served to be a more general and in-depth look at the history behind a nom de plume. I suppose in any case, you lead by good example and actually presenting authors is a solid way as any to explore the concept of a pen name. The book is strong, sure, and as I said there's a lot to learn - however, I couldn't help but feel like the book ran out of steam for me. In my own ignorance, the four or five authors I happened to know little about also seemed to come in towards the last third or so of the book. As a result, my interest waned slightly and I felt the book explored the more extreme territories earlier on in the book.

Another thing I found curious (and this may well be the result of the edition I bought) was the lack of any kind of conclusion - as soon as we're told of the story of the last author, the book closes with acknowledgements without another word. I found the end of the book to be anti-climatic in a way, ending with little fanfare. From the tone of the opening paragraphs detailing the use of pseudonyms I expected more of the same at the end, but this hardly ruined the book. I would have appreciated a little more in the way of psychology behind nom de plumes, but I felt the book to be thoroughly researched and well written, if a little pretentious at times. For anyone interested in literature even slightly, you'll find there's a lot to be learned about some classic authors and why they chose to adopt an alternate name in the first place.

[Chris · Rating 2 out of 5]

The concept of this book is a good one: find a bunch of famous writers who used pseudonyms and probe into why. The book itself is structured as multiple mini biographies, each one introduced by a catchy one-liner. ("They were dead by the age of forty." - The Bronte Sisters)

Sure, the Introduction read a bit like an undergrad English paper, but the first few chapters were quite engaging. The Brontes are followed by the likes of George Eliot, Lewis Caroll, Mark Twain, and George Orwell. (Who even knew that last one was a pseudonym??)

Unfortunately, somewhere around halfway, this book loses steam in a big way. Ciuraru starts including much lesser-known writers, and doing so in a way that leaves the reader feeling like you've just had an uncomfortable encounter with a holier-than-thou MFA student.

Of course, learning about new authors isn't really a negative, but as the names get harder to follow, so does the structure of the biography. In the later chapters, Ciuraru often jumps around in time, using a quote from an author's work to make a point several pages before explaining when the author actually wrote that book. For one author in particular, Alice Sheldon, Ciuraru fails to mention a single book the author wrote. She instead spends that chapter sensationalizing the tragic mental illness that befell Sheldon in later years.

The later chapters also feature increasing amounts of seemingly random opinion statements. In the chapter on Isak Dinesen (of Out of Africa fame) for example, the explanation of how the author landed on the name Isak takes a bizarre detour into commentary on her sense of humor:

"(In the Old Testament, Isaac was born to Sarah when she was quite old; his birth seemed almost like a miraculous prank from God.) The name reflected Karen's comic spirit and her love of humor, particularly irony. It was an element in her work, even in the "tragic" stories, that was never given its proper due by most critics."

In summary, Nom de Plume is a book that is interesting enough in small chunks, but quite frustrating if read straight through. Perhaps one to leave on the coffee table and flip around amongst the stories.

[Emily · Rating 1 out of 5]

Typically, I love books like this - oddly specific non-fiction books that will leave me with countless anecdotes to annoy my husband with late into the night. Nom de Plume: A (Secret) History of Pseudonyms does not fall into that category. Instead, it is relegated to the "books I didn't like but had already invested in so I kept reading" category.

The book is a series of mini-biographies that seem to include details that are completely pointless:

She was lonely and anxious, ambidextrous, and physically clumsy. She was sensitive to noise and despised it... She liked to read the dictionary every evening before dinner... She made furniture... She slept with many women named Virginia. - Ch. 15

If there was some substance, something significant that the author was able to piece together with these random facts I would appreciate it; instead it just felt like filling space. I understood it to be a book about the use of pseudonyms but it really isn't. It's a book of short biographies of authors that happened to use them always, occasionally, or for one book alone. The connection between the chapters was nil, and that was very frustrating as a reader.

Speaking of organization, the naming of the chapters was so frustrating and made me question the editor rather than the author. Almost all of the chapter names followed the formula of pseudonym & birth name (ex: Chapter 5 Mark Twain & Samuel Clemens). Then, without any explanation of why, in Chapter 10 it was reversed - Sylvia Plath & Victoria Lucas - implying that Plath was the pen name of Lucas. This reversal was repeated in Chapter 14, and it led to complete confusion. Again, if I could decipher a purpose for it it wouldn't be so bad, but without one it is just sloppy work.

As some other reviewers have noted, the tone of the book often changes from sentence to sentence. Many references are made but never explained, and so many French phrases are included but not translated that I had to keep my phone handy to check the meaning of certain passages.

I will say that it starts out much stronger than it finishes, and I enjoyed the chapter on the Bronte sisters. That's about it though.