Nom de Plume Read Free Page B

perfunctorily in genres such as crime fiction or erotica. Today, using a pen name is less often a creative or playful endeavor than a commercial one. Reticence is not what it used to be.
    For each of the authors in this book, hiding behind a nom de plume was essential. However varied their literary styles and their reasons for going undercover, all of them longed to escape the burdens of selfhood—whether permanently or for a brief period in their lives. To publish their work, many risked their reputations, their means of subsistence, and even the relationships they held most dear. Three of the authors committed suicide (Sylvia Plath, Romain Gary, and Alice Sheldon); others had contemplated killing themselves or attempted it; at least one author (Alice Sheldon) was bipolar; and several—including the Brontë sisters, George Eliot, Isak Dinesen, and George Orwell—suffered from chronic health issues. Many succumbed to strange compulsions, addictions, and self-destructive habits. Almost all were lonely, and few were adept at friendship, marriage, or parenthood. One was a convicted criminal. A number of them, including Henry Green, Georges Simenon, and Patricia Highsmith, were alcoholics. Some achieved literary success in their twenties, while others were late bloomers who found recognition in midlife. But the Portuguese writer Fernando Pessoa, who channeled more than seventy different identities, lived in obscurity and never achieved acclaim. At the time of his death, he left behind more than thirty thousand fragments of his unpublished writings in a trunk. For Romain Gary, the best-selling French author of the twentieth century, pseudonymity became a cage, much like fame.
    Most of these authors had endured childhoods with domineering, neglectful, or cruel parents. They suffered profound trauma early on, such as the death of a parent (in the case of Dinesen’s father, by hanging himself) or of one or more siblings. Mark Twain outlived his spouse and all but one of his children; Georges Simenon’s daughter killed herself. For these troubled authors whose lives seemed to bring impediments without surcease, an alter ego served as a kind of buffer, protecting them (at least up to a point) from the painful aspects of their lives.
    This book is a selective chronicle of pseudonymity over a hundred-year period, beginning in the mid-nineteenth century and ending in the mid-twentieth century. To explore this peculiar tradition is to tap into, among other themes, the complex psychological machinery of authorial identity; the perils of literary fame; the struggles of the artist within a society generally hostile to such a vocation; courage and faith; and the nature of creativity itself. In certain respects, delving into pseudonymity is a frustrating endeavor. No pithy or singular conclusions can be made. It’s a puzzle. By definition, this is a history riddled with lacunae: there are thousands of recorded noms de plume, but many more that we will never know.
    In reflecting on the tumultuous lives of the authors in this book, it’s hard not to consider the literary deprivation we might have suffered had they not found the protective cover they needed to write. But that would mean contemplating a world without, say, Jane Eyre , Middlemarch , or Alice in Wonderland. Instead, let us celebrate the sense of liberation, however short-lived, that these writers found through pseudonymity. In carving out their secret identities, they went to astonishing lengths. Each of these authors possessed extraordinary determination and resilience.
    Here are their stories.

They were dead by the
age of forty
    Chapter 1
    Anne, Charlotte, and Emily Brontë & ACTON, CURRER, AND ELLIS BELL
    O nce there
were five sisters. In 1825, Maria and Elizabeth Brontë, the two eldest, died of
tuberculosis. That left Charlotte (born in 1816), Emily (born in 1818), and Anne
(born in 1820), as well as a brother, Branwell, born in 1817. Their