- Photo:
- A.F. Bradley, New York
- Wikimedia Commons
- Public domain
Pen names: Mark Twain, Thomas Jefferson Snodgrass, Josh
Clemens assumed a number of pen names before settling on Twain, after years of working on Mississippi riverboats where the term "mark twain" was shouted out as a way to mark the depth of the river, as measured on a rope. In Life on the Mississippi, Twain explains, "I was a fresh new journalist, and needed a nom de guerre; so I confiscated the ancient mariner's discarded one, and have done my best to make it remain what it was in his hands."- Birthplace: USA, Missouri, Florida
- Works: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, The Prince and the Pauper, The Mysterious Stranger
- Photo:
- Photo:
- David Martin
- Wikimedia Commons
- Public Domain
Pen names: Mrs. Silence Dogood
When Benjamin Franklin was a teenager living in Boston, his older brother James founded the The New-England Courant as the colonies' first independent newspaper. Franklin had been dying to write letters for publication in the paper, and when those letters were rejected, he adopted the persona of a middle-aged widow and his letters were gladly accepted and printed, and are said to have been widely read. The ruse ended when Franklin's brother discovered Dogood's true identity, and young Franklin was forced to leave town for Philadelphia.- Birthplace: Boston, Massachusetts, USA
- Works: The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard's Almanack, Compleated Autobiography by Benjamin Franklin, Bite-size Ben Franklin, The Papers of Benjamin Franklin
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Pen name: Robert Galbraith
J.K. Rowling, author of the famous Harry Potter series, assumed her pseudonym in order to “publish without hype or expectation.” She called it a “liberating experience” and “a pure pleasure to get feedback from publishers and readers under a different name.” In 2013, Rowling published The Cuckoo’s Calling under her pseudonym.- Birthplace: Yate, Gloucestershire, England, UK
- Works: Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Harry Potter: Symphonic Suite, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
- Photo:
- Pinguino Kolb
- Wikimedia Commons
- CC BY 2.0
Pen name: Richard Bachman
Even Stephen King has written under a nom de plume. The king of horror published seven novels under his pen name, the first one published in 1977. He says, “I did that because back in the early days of my career there was a feeling in the publishing business that one book a year was all the public would accept.” King explains that he came up with his pseudonym on the fly while on the phone with his publisher. He had a Richard Stark book on his desk, and a Bachman Turner Overdrive song was playing. He combined the two names and Richard Bachman was born. The move allowed King to publish several novels a year. In 1985, a bookstore clerk named Steve Brown noticed the similarities between the two author’s styles and, after some snooping, determined that they were the same person. Stephen King soon confirmed this, and announced that Bachman had died of “Cancer of the Pseudonym.”- Birthplace: Portland, Maine, USA
- Works: Pet Sematary, Creepshow, Salem's Lot, Silver Bullet, Christine
- 1The Shining5,830 Votes
- 2It6,880 Votes
- 3The Stand6,494 Votes
- 4The Green Mile4,455 Votes
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- Anne Rice
- Wikimedia Commons
- Public Domain
Pen names: Anne Rampling, A. N. Roquelaure
Anne Rice, perhaps best known for her series The Vampire Chronicles, is yet another popular writer who’s released work under pen names. Her 1985 Exit to Eden and 1986 Belinda were published under the Rampling pen name. Both are erotic novels, the former exploring the subject of BDSM. In the 80s, Rice also published the Sleeping Beauty Trilogy under the Roquelaure byline. The series included The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty, Beauty’s Punishment, and Beauty’s Release. These were also erotic BDSM novels that explicitly outlined pornographic tales and fantasies — which could explain why Rice opted for the pseudonym. In an interview with the Telegraph, Rice dismissed those books as “an obsession of youth – or something.” But as the Guardian points out, those novels continue to earn her around $50,000 in royalties each year.- Birthplace: New Orleans, Louisiana, USA
- Works: Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles, The Queen of the Damned, Interview with the Vampire, The Vampire Lestat, The Vampire Armand
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Pen name: J.D. Robb
Best-selling author Nora Roberts already had years of success under her belt before she began churning out books under a pen name. As explained on the author’s website, using the pseudonym offered a new writing challenge, and an opportunity to delve into a genre outside Roberts’ wheelhouse. While she’d previously focused on romance novels, after taking up the pseudonym, Roberts began publishing futuristic science fiction books, all part of the In Death series, beginning in 1995. After the twelfth book of the series hit shelves in 2001, Roberts finally revealed that it had been her all along. The series is still going strong — and the books continue to publish under the name J.D Robb, despite the fact that everyone now knows J.D. Robb is really Nora Roberts.- Birthplace: Silver Spring, Maryland
- Works: Irish Thoroughbred, Sweet revenge, Spellbound, Sacred Sins, Take This Man
- Photo:
- Charles Baugniet
- Wikimedia Commons
- Public Domain
Pen name: Boz
During his early career in the 1830s, English author Charles Dickens wrote a series of journalistic pieces and drawings that were collectively published under the title "Sketches by Boz." The name Boz, according to numerous accounts, is a reference to Dickens's younger brother Augustus, whom he had nicknamed "Moses." When spoken with a stuffy nose, "Moses" became "Boses," which, in turn, became "Boz," a name Dickens used for several years, causing great mystery among his readers.- Birthplace: Portsmouth, Hampshire, England, UK
- Works: A Tale of Two Cities, Great Expectations, A Christmas Carol, David Copperfield, Oliver Twist
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Pen name: A.M. Barnard
Best known for her novel Little Women – published under her real name – Louisa May Alcott has also written fiction under a pseudonym. Historian Leona Rostenberg first discovered this incognito pen name while researching at Harvard’s Houghton Library. Rostenberg found a collection of letters written to Alcott from a group of Boston publishers. These letters, written in 1865 and 1866, revealed the pseudonym, along with the name of the periodical in which Barnard's works were published and the titles of three of Alcott’s sensational narratives. Rostenberg and her fellow historian and rare books dealer Madeleine B. Stern, who also researched Alcott, brought the discovery to light in the 1970s when they published some of the author’s little-known works.- Birthplace: Germantown, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
- Works: Little Women, Little Men, Jo's Boys, An Old-Fashioned Girl, A Long Fatal Love Chase
Charlotte, Emily, and Anne Brontë
- Photo:
- Branwell Brontë
- Wikimedia Commons
- Public Domain
Pen names: Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell
While many contemporary writers have taken up pen names for various creative reasons, the Brontë sisters did so out of necessity. In 19th century England, women were not permitted to publish, and so the sisters adopted male pseudonyms, each maintaining their real initials. In May, 1846, they published their first anthology of poetry using these names. Though this initial work wasn’t very successful, some of the sisters’ most famous and best-selling works were also published under these pen names, like Charlotte’s Jane Eyre and Emily’s Wuthering Heights, both in published in 1847. The following year, Charlotte and Anne travelled to London to meet face-to-face with their publisher, ultimately revealing that they were women.- Photo:
- Photo:
- David Shankbone
- Wikimedia Commons
- CC BY 3.0
Pen name: Anonymous
Joe Klein doesn’t just write political commentary for TIME. In 1996, he also penned a novel called Primary Colors under his pen name. The book is a roman à clef about Bill Clinton’s first presidential campaign in 1992. Klein publicly denied several times that he was the author, but eventually came forward at a news conference. The New York Times reported that Klein protected his identity in the same way a journalist protects his or her sources. “It wasn’t easy. But I felt that there are times when I’ve had to lie to protect a source, and I put this in that category,” he said at the conference.- Birthplace: USA, Albany, New York
- Works: Primary Colors, Politics Lost: From RFK to W: How Politicians Have Become Less Courageous and More Interested in Keeping Power than in Doing What's Right for America, Woody Guthrie. Die Biographie., Bill Clinton, Colores Primarios
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Pen name: Barbara Vine
The prolific English mystery writer Ruth Rendell took up her pen name in 1986. Under that name, she released 14 novels. As the author once explained to the National Post, the two distinct bylines offered the opportunity to hone two distinct voices. The author also said she used Vine to explore specific topics, like the evolution of morality.- Birthplace: London, England
- Works: A Dark-Adapted Eye, To Fear a Painted Devil, A Judgement in Stone, The Babes in the Wood, Women of Mystery 1
Jayne Anne Krentz
Pen names: Amanda Quick, Jayne Castle
Romance novelist Jayne Anne Krentz has churned out books under her own name as well as two separate pen names since 1979. These names establish three separate literary worlds: Krentz for romantic suspense, Quick for historical fiction, and Castle for futuristic science fiction. But this wasn’t Krentz’s original plan. “Trust me, I did not set out to establish three pen names … The idea back at the start was that I would stick with the name that proved most successful,” she told USA Today. Eventually, these identities just kind of evolved until they stuck, giving the author room to develop distinct types of writing.- Photo:
- James M. Curran
- Wikimedia Commons
- CC BY-SA 3.0
Pen names: Ed McBain, Hunt Collins, Curt Cannon, Richard Marsten, D.A. Addams, and Ted Taine
Novelist Evan Hunter wrote both crime and science fiction using his own name and multiple pen names. Born Salvatore Albert Lombino in 1926, the author legally changed his name to Evan Hunter in 1952, but saw the most success from the work he published under the pseudonym Ed McBain. Beginning in 1956, he used that name for the majority of the crime fiction he wrote as part of the long-running 87th Precinct series. In a 2005 obituary for Hunter, who died of cancer at age 78, The New York Times explained that Hunter initially moved away from his (very Italian) birth name due to prejudice against writers with foreign names.- Birthplace: New York, New York, USA
- Works: The Birds, Cop Hater, The Young Savages, Strangers When We Meet, Edgar Award Winners Collection
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Pen name: Sapphire
Lofton is an American author and performance poet who wrote, performed, and eventually published her poetry during the height of the Slam Poetry movement in New York. Lofton took the pen name Sapphire because of its one-time cultural association with the image of a "belligerent Black woman," and also because she said she could more easily picture that name on a book cover than her birth name. She is best known for her novels The Kid and Push, which became the award winning film, Precious.
- Birthplace: USA, Fort Ord, California
- Works: Push, American Dreams, Mastering Time Travel, Astral Projection to Reveal the Secrets of Heaven, Meditations on the rainbow
Robert Beck
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Pen name: Iceberg Slim
As Iceberg Slim, Beck sold more than six million books before he died in 1992. At one time he was said to be the best-selling African American novelist ever. For nearly 30 years before he became a writer, Beck was a pimp. When his first book, Pimp: The Story of My Life, came out in 1967, it held nothing back. Beck became an underground cult figure. He would influence numerous writers, rappers, filmmakers, and criminals over the years.- Birthplace: Chicago, Illinois
- Works: Pimp, The Naked Soul of Iceberg Slim, Death Wish, Mama Black Widow, Airtight Willie and Me
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Pen name: Stan Lee
If everything had gone according to plan, Stan Lee would have been known for writing classic American novels, not comic book series like Spider-Man, X-Men, and the Fantastic Four. Born Stanley Martin Lieber, he became an assistant at Timely Comics in 1939, and, according to his autobiography, he used use the pen name Stan Lee because he wanted to save his real name for more serious, literary work, later in life. As it happened, that serious, literary work never came. Lee adopted his pseudonym officially and became the most famous comic book author of all time.- Birthplace: New York, New York, USA
- Works: The Fantastic Four, The Ultimate Spider-Man, The Condor, Mosaic, Daredevil vs. Spider-Man
Ruth Crowley
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Pen name: Ann Landers
In 1943, Chicago Sun-Times columnist Ruth Crowley started an advice column called "Ask Ann Landers." Crowley chose the pen name randomly, borrowing the last name from a family friend. For 11 years Crowley wrote the "Ask Ann Landers" column with a three-year break from 1948 to 1951.- Photo:
- Oskar Gustav Rejlander
- Wikimedia Commons
- Public Domain
Pen name: Lewis Carroll
Author Lewis Carroll made his name as a master of fanciful wordplay and often nonsensical-sounding poetry and prose in books such as Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass. Fittingly, his pen name is a play on his real name as well. Lewis is the anglicized version of Ludovicus, which is the Latin form of Lutwidge. Carroll is an Irish surname that comes from Carolus, the Latin word for Charles.- Birthplace: Daresbury, Widnes, United Kingdom
- Works: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Through the Looking-Glass, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, The Annotated Alice
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Pen name: George Orwell
As the story goes, British writer Eric Arthur Blair's first book Down and Out in Paris and London was snatched out of the trash can by his friend Mabel Fierz, who delivered the manuscript to a publisher and pressured him into printing it. A pen name was used on the book because Blair didn't want his family to know the level of poverty he had endured during the writing of his book. Blair wrote that he chose George Orwell partly in tribute to his beloved River Orwell in Suffolk, England, and because it was a "good, round, English name."- Birthplace: Motihari, India
- Works: Nineteen Eighty-Four, Animal Farm, Down and Out in Paris and London, Keep the Aspidistra Flying, Coming Up for Air
- 1Nineteen Eighty-Four154 Votes
- 2Animal Farm134 Votes
- 3Down and Out in Paris and London50 Votes
- 4Homage to Catalonia45 Votes
- Photo:
- Alexandre-Louis-François d'Albert-Durade
- Wikimedia Commons
- Public Domain
Pen name: George Eliot
Evans wrote during the the Victorian era (1837-1901) when female authors were often limited to writing romance novels and other tales of domestic intrigue. Not satisfied with light-hearted books, and in an attempt to be granted the same respect as her male counterparts, she chose the pen name George Eliot. Eliot was simply a "good, mouth-filling word," as she later put it, but George was a reference to her lover, philosopher George Henry Lewes, a married man with whom she secretly lived. When Evans was revealed as George Eliot, news of their affair caused great controversy, though it did little to dampen her status as a famous author, with works such as Silas Marner and Middlemarch.- Birthplace: Arbury Hall, United Kingdom
- Works: Middlemarch: A Study of Provincial Life, Silas Marner, Daniel Deronda, El Molino Del Floss / The Mill on the Floss, A Simple Twist of Fate
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- Gracenote
Pen name: Joseph Conrad
Conrad's given name doesn't exactly roll off the tongue, so when the famed Polish writer of Heart of Darkness and other famous works began publishing books, he chose an anglicized version of his name, more easily remembered and pronounced by his readers. The name change irked many of his fellow Poles, but the author defended the choice, saying, "It is widely known that I am a Pole and that Józef Konrad are my two Christian names, the latter being used by me as a surname so that foreign mouths should not distort my real surname."- Birthplace: Berdichev, Kiev Governorate, Russian Empire
- Works: Heart of Darkness, Lord Jim, The Secret Agent, Nostromo, The Shadow Line
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- via Twitter
Pen names: Dr. Seuss, T. Seuss, Seuss, L. Pasteur, L. Burbank, D. G. Rossetti
At Dartmouth College in the 1920s, Geisel was the editor of the Jack-O-Lantern humor newspaper on campus. But, according to the National Endowment for the Humanities, when he was caught drinking gin in his dorm room with several friends, the school came down hard. He was stripped of his editorship and forced to quit all other extracurricular activities. As a way of secretly remaining on staff, Geisel began signing his work with a variety of pen names, eventually settling on his middle name and later adding "Dr." as a mockingly prestigious prefix.- Birthplace: Springfield, Massachusetts
- Works: The Cat in the Hat, The Cat in the Hat, Green Eggs and Ham, The Lorax, Dr. Seuss on the Loose
- 1Green Eggs and Ham724 Votes
- 2How the Grinch Stole Christmas!648 Votes
- 3The Cat in the Hat616 Votes
- 4The Lorax597 Votes
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- via Wikimedia
Pen name: Pablo Neruda
What's a poet to do when his father hates poetry and actively dissuades him from writing it? For Chilean author, diplomat, and politician Ricardo Neftalí Reyes Basoalto, the answer was to keep writing, but change his name. Choosing a pen name that would mislead his father, Basoalto picked Pablo Neruda as an homage to French poet Paul Verlaine, and Czech poet Jan Neruda, both of whom he greatly admired. Neruda eventually adopted his pen name legally, and his works such as Twenty Love Poems and A Song of Despair became landmarks of 20th century poetry.- Birthplace: Parral, Chile
- Works: Cien Sonetos de Amor, Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair, Canto General, A new decade, heights of Macchu Picchu
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- via Twitter
Pen name: O. Henry
According to an interview with The New York Times in 1909, American author Porter's pen name was the result of randomly picking a last name from a newspaper and then settling on a simple first initial. Other sources, however, contend that the writer of famous stories like "The Gift of the Magi" and "The Cop and the Anthem" got his nom de plume from a more sordid source: prison. Porter was sentenced to five years for embezzlement in the late 1890s and, according to Irish writer William Trevor, O. Henry is a reference to a prison guard named Orrin Henry, who worked at the Ohio Penitentiary, where Porter was housed.- Birthplace: Greensboro, North Carolina
- Works: The Gift of the Magi, Cabbages and Kings, The last leaf, The Gentle Grafter, Whirligigs
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- Nicolas de Largillière
- Wikimedia Commons
- Public domain
Pen name: Voltaire
Great Enlightenment thinker and author of "Candide," Voltaire's real name was actually François-Marie Arouet. He used a pen name to avoid being persecuted by the Catholic Church and the French King, both of which he openly criticized.- Birthplace: Paris, France
- Works: Candide, Zaïre, The age of Louis XIV, The White Bull, Letters on the English
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- via Wikimedia
Pen name: Robert Jordan
Author of the popular fantasy series The Wheel of Time Robert it has been speculated that Rigney's pen name comes from the main character of Ernest Hemingway's novel For Whom the Bell Tolls, but Robert Jordan has since clarified on his blog that his pen names have all been chosen from three lists of names using his real initials.- Birthplace: Charleston, South Carolina, USA
- Works: The Wheel of Time, The Eye of the World, The Fires of Heaven, The Gathering Storm, The Conan Chronicles
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- Talbot/Bobbs-Merrill Company
- Wikimedia Commons
- Public domain
Pen name: Ayn Rand
Author of The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, Rand chose to use an abbreviated, simplified version of her real name in order to avoid confusion among her readers.- Birthplace: Saint Petersburg, Russia
- Works: Atlas Shrugged, The Fountainhead, The Fountainhead, Anthem, Love Letters
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- via Imgur
Pen names: David Axton, Leonard Chris, Brian Coffey, Deanna Dwyer, K.R. Dwyer, John Hill, Leigh Nichols, Anthony North, Richard Paige, Owen West, Aaron Wolfe
In the late seventies and early eighties publishers worried about flooding the market with too much of a good thing, so they instituted a strict marketing rule: one novel per writer, per year. High-volume writers had no choice but to get around this rule with pen names. Thriller writer Dean Koontz, for example, used a whopping eleven of them.- Birthplace: Everett, Pennsylvania
- Works: Phantoms, Watchers, Demon Seed, Intensity, Midnight
- 1Odd Thomas67 Votes
- 2Demon Seed15 Votes
- 3Watchers46 Votes
- 4Phantoms40 Votes
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- via Pinterest
Pen name: Paul French
Isaac Asimov - who wrote over 460 books during his lifetime - was never asked by publishers to slow down. But when approached to write a young adult sci-fi series intended for television adaptation, the MIT professor adopted the pseudonym Paul French. He wrote six books as French, but as he prepared to write the seventh, the series’s television future fell through. No longer concerned with someone else’s possibly bad adaptation, he threw caution to the wind and began to drop overt hints about his identity right into the text of the seventh book.- Birthplace: Petrovichi, Russia
- Works: I, Robot, Foundation, The Caves of Steel, The foundation trilogy
- 1Foundation161 Votes
- 2The Caves of Steel78 Votes
- 3The Gods Themselves55 Votes
- 4The End of Eternity50 Votes
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- via Wikimedia
Pen name: Mary Westmancott
When you become a giant in your field, it can be difficult to convince readers to trust you with another genre. Agatha Christie was the queen of mystery and used a pen names to write romance novels.- Birthplace: Torquay, Devon, England, UK
- Works: The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, The Mirror Crack'd, Evil Under the Sun, They Do It with Mirrors, Nemesis
- 1A Murder Is Announced161 Votes
- 2Murder at the Vicarage128 Votes
- 34.50 from Paddington133 Votes
- 4The Body in the Library128 Votes
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- Gracenote
Pen name: Edgar Box
Gore Vidal used his pseudonym to save his career. Box wrote several lucrative mystery novels in the late 40s and early 50s, after New York Times book critic Orville Prescott announced his intention, as part of a particularly harsh review of Vidal’s The City And The Pillar, to avoid reviewing Vidal’s next five books. Vidal used Box to sidestep this blatant attempt to force him into obscurity.- Birthplace: West Point, New York, USA
- Works: Ben-Hur, Caligula, Myra Breckinridge, Suddenly, Last Summer
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- via Reddit
Pen name: William Lee
William S. Burroughs started his career and published his first novel, Junky, under his pen name, but dropped it and chose to use his real name right before the major success of his career hit.- Birthplace: St. Louis, Missouri, USA
- Works: Drugstore Cowboy, Naked Lunch, Junkie, Queer, The Soft Machine
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- via Pinterest
Pen name: Henry Hudson, John Lange
Before Michael Crichton made a name for himself with novels like Jurassic Park, he was a student at Harvard Medical School, secretly writing adventure thrillers under the names Henry Hudson and John Lange. He used the pen names to keep his thriller novels separate from his life as the serious Harvard student. Shortly after he graduated, Crichton released his first best seller, Andromeda Strain, under his real name.- Birthplace: Chicago, Illinois, USA
- Works: Jurassic Park, Twister, Westworld, Disclosure, The Runaway
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- via Wikimedia
Pen name: Anthony Burgess
Burgess was an English novelist and critic. He was also active as a composer, librettist, poet, playwright, screenwriter, journalist, essayist, travel writer, broadcaster, and translator. Born John Burgess Wilson in the northern English city of Manchester, he lived and worked variously in Southeast Asia, the United States, and Mediterranean Europe. His fiction includes The Long Day Wanes, Nothing Like the Sun, and A Clockwork Orange.- Birthplace: England
- Works: A Clockwork Orange, Inside Mr. Enderby, Joysprick, Little Wilson and Big God, Being the First Part of the Confessions of Anthony Burgess
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Pen name: B. Traven
B. Traven is one of the most mysterious figures in 20th century literature and his exact identity is still subject to much doubt. Although Traven claimed to be an American, his most important works were first published in Germany during the 1920s and 1930s, before some of them appeared in translation in England. Nothing definitive is known about Traven's origin. However, Traven's novels have been translated into more than 30 languages, and sold more than 25 million copies. Some investigators believe that B. Traven was the pen name of Otto Feige, the son of a German pottery worker from Schwiebus (now Swiebodzin, Poland), who traveled widely and worked variously as a manual laborer, actor, and the editor of an anarchist journal.- Birthplace: Schwiebus, Prussia, Germany
- Works: The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, The Death Ship, The White Rose, The Bridge In the Jungle, La rebelión de los colgados
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- via Pinterest
Pen name: C. S. Forester
Smith was an English novelist who rose to fame with tales of naval warfare. His most notable works were the 12 book Horatio Hornblower Saga, depicting a Royal Navy officer during the Napoleonic era, and The African Queen, which was adapted to film in 1951 by John Huston, starring Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn.- Birthplace: Cairo, Egypt
- Works: Captain Horatio Hornblower, Captain Horatio Hornblower R.N., The African Queen, Lord Hornblower, Death to the French
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- Metaweb (FB)
- Fair use
Pen names: Carter Dickson, Carr Dickson, Roger Fairbairn
Carr was a prolific American author of detective stories who also published under many pen names. He is generally regarded as one of the greatest writers of so-called "Golden Age" mysteries: complex, plot-driven stories in which the puzzle is paramount. Most of his many novels and short stories feature the elucidation, by an eccentric detective, of apparently impossible, and seemingly supernatural crimes. He was influenced in this regard by the works of Gaston Leroux and by the Father Brown stories of GK Chesterton. Carr modeled his major detective, the fat and genial lexicographer Dr. Gideon Fell, on Chesterton.- Birthplace: Uniontown, Pennsylvania
- Works: The Hollow Man, The Exploits of Sherlock Holmes, The Black Spectacles, The blind Barber, Death Turns the Tables
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Pen name: Christopher Pike
McFadden is a bestselling author of young adult and children's fiction, but his expertise is in the thriller genre. The pseudonym Christopher Pike is allegedly a reference to the captain of the USS Enterprise in the pilot of "Star Trek: The Original Series." His best-known work is Fall Into Darkness.- Birthplace: New York City, New York
- Works: Fall into Darkness, The DEADLY PAST, The Creature in the Teacher, Slumber Party, Bury Me Deep
Ian Hamilton, John Fuller, Clive James, Russell Davies, and Julian Barnes
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Pen name: Edward Pygge
Pygge was a pseudonym used by Ian Hamilton, John Fuller, Clive James, Russell Davies, and Julian Barnes. Hamilton invented the name, and he and James used it for satirical poems attacking current poetic fashions in Hamilton's influential literary magazine The Review. Davies wrote poems as well and performed work at The Edward Pygge Revue. John Fuller and Colin Falck also wrote one or two pieces as Pygge for The Review. Barnes also wrote a column under the name in Hamilton's next magazine, The New Review.
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- Metaweb
- CC-BY
Pen name: Franklin W. Dixon
McFarlane was a 20th-century Canadian writer who was the first of a variety of different authors to use this pen name for The Hardy Boys novels. Dixon is the pen name, or house name, that has been used for all Hardy Boys books, except for the graphic novels and Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys Super Mystery. For the Nancy Drew crossover books the Nancy Drew house name, Carolyn Keene, was used.- Birthplace: Carleton Place, Canada
- Works: The Bombay Boomerang, Skin & Bones, Double Trouble, Blown Away, Track of the Zombie
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- Metaweb (FB)
- Public domain
Pen name: George Sand
Dupin was a 19th-century French novelist and early feminist. Married in 1822, she soon tired of her husband, Casimir Dudevant, and began a series of liaisons. Her lovers included Prosper Merimee, Alfred de Musset, and, most importantly, Fredric Chopin. She became famous (under her male pseudonym) with her novel Indiana, a protest against conventions that bind an unhappy wife to her husband. Lelia extended her iconoclastic views on social and class associations. Similar themes, along with her sympathy for the poor, are evident in her finest works, the so-called rustic novels, including The Devil's Pool, The Country Waif, and Little Fadette.- Birthplace: Paris, France
- Works: Little Fadette, Flaubert-Sand: The Correspondence, Lelia, Indiana, Fanchon
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- via Wikimedia
Pen name: Guillaume Apollinaire
Kostrowicki was a French poet, playwright, short story writer, novelist, and art critic of Polish descent. He is considered one of the foremost poets of the early 20th century, as well as one of the forefathers of surrealism. He wrote one of the earliest works to be described as surrealist, the play The Breasts of Tiresias (1917, used as the basis for a 1947 opera).- Birthplace: Rome, Italy
- Works: L'hérésiarque et Cie, Les Onze Mille Verges ou les Amours d'un hospodar, Alcools, Calligrammes, Debauched Hospodar and memoirs of a young rakehell
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Pen name: Isak Dinesen
Blixen, (nee Karen Christenze Dinesen) was born on April 17, 1885, near Copenhagen, Denmark, into an affluent family. She was known for her delightful personality and lively conversational skills and was recognized for her mastery of story telling, best known for Out of Africa, published under her pen name.- Birthplace: Rungsted
- Works: Out of Africa, Seven Gothic Tales, The Immortal Story, Winter's tales, Ensayos Completos\/complete Essays
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- via Pinterest
Pen name: James Tiptree, Jr., Raccoona Sheldon
Sheldon was an American science fiction author better known by her Tiptree pen name, which she used from 1967 to her death. She also wrote occasionally as Raccoona Sheldon. She was most notable for breaking down the barriers between writing perceived as inherently "male" or "female" — it was not publicly known until 1977 that Tiptree was a woman. Tiptree was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2012.- Birthplace: Chicago, Illinois
- Works: Crown of Stars, Fantasy Annual 5, Houston, Houston, Do You Read?
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- via Twitter
Pen name: Lemony Snicket
Handler is an American author best known for his work under the pen name Lemony Snicket. Four of Handler's major works have been published under his own name as well.- Birthplace: San Francisco, California, USA
- Works: The Bad Beginning, The Austere Academy, The End, The Penultimate Peril, The Reptile Room
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- Metaweb (FB)
- Public domain
Pen name: Lu Xun
Shuren from Shaoxing, Zhejiang, Chine was a great modern litterateur, ideologist, and revolutionist. He adopted his pen name after the May 4th new culture movement. Because writings under his pen name have such a great influence, people are used to calling him Lu Xun.- Birthplace: Shaoxing, China
- Works: Call To Arms, The True Story of Ah Q, Nan qiang bei diao ji, Lu Xun pi Kong fan ru wen ji, Letters Between Two
- Photo:
Maria Louise Ramé
- Photo:
- Metaweb (FB)
- Public domain
Pen name: Ouida
English novelist Maria Louise Ramé (who preferred to be known as Marie Louise de la Ramée) used the pen name of Ouida. During her career, she wrote more than 40 novels, children's books and collections of short stories and essays. She was an animal rights activist and animal rescuer, and at times owned as many as thirty dogs. She is best known for her books Moths and Nello.- Birthplace: Bury St Edmunds, United Kingdom
- Works: Under Two Flags, A Dog of Flanders, An altruist and four essays, The Massarenes, Pascarèl
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Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore
- Photo:
- via Imgur
Pen name: Lewis Padgett
Husband-and-wife writing team Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore were both noted science fiction writers in their own right and together they created a third writer, under the Padgett pen name. In 1943 they published what would prove to be one of their most popular stories Mimsy Were the Borogroves, in which two contemporary children discover a box of educational toys from the far future.- Works: Mutant, A Gnome There Was, The Proud Robot, Robots Have No Tails, Line to Tomorrow
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Pen name: Peyo
Culliford was a Belgian comic artist, perhaps best known for the creation of The Smurfs comic strip. He took on the name Peyo early in his professional career, based on an English cousin's mispronunciation of Pierrot (a diminutive form of Pierre).- Birthplace: Brussels, Belgium
- Works: The Smurfs and the Magic Flute, The Egg and the Smurfs, Schtroumpf Vert et Vert Schtroumpf, Benni Bärenstark, Bd.11
Charles Farrar Browne
- Photo:
- via Wikimedia
Pen name: Artemus Ward, Chub
Browne, born in Waterford, Maine was the son of a surveyor, storekeeper, and farmer. At 13, he was apprenticed to a printer and set type for several newspapers in New England before a Boston print shop hired him in 1851. His first humorous sketches, signed "Chub," appeared in the Boston Carpet-Bag. Ward was important to a number of writers, notably Mark Twain. Besides being responsible for the publication of Twain's first big success, his "Jumping Frog" story, in an eastern magazine in 1865, Ward provided an invaluable model for comic lecturing, as Twain himself acknowledged.- Birthplace: Waterford, Maine
- Works: The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Sorcerers' Apprentices: 100 Years of Law Clerks at the United States Supreme Court, Artemus Ward, Selected works of Artemus Ward, Sandwiches By Artemus Ward
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People Who WriteLists about novelists, poets, short story authors, journalists, essayists, and playwrights, from simple rankings to fun facts about the men and women behind the pens.
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People Who Write
Lists about novelists, poets, short story authors, journalists, essayists, and playwrights, from simple rankings to fun facts about the men and women behind the pens.
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