Nom de Plume: A (Secret) History of Pseudonyms

331 Pages·2011·1.36 MB·English

by  Carmela Ciuraru

Nom de Plume
A (Secret) History of Pseudonyms
Carmela Ciuraru
Dedication
For Sarah, everything
(and for Oscar)
Epigraphs
World is crazier and more of it than we think.
Incorrigibly plural. I peel and portion
A tangerine and spit the pips and feel
The drunkenness of things being various.
—LOUIS MACNEICE, “Snow”
On whom, then, my God, am I the onlooker? How many am I? Who is
me? What then is this gap between myself and me?
—FERNANDO PESSOA “Must a name mean something?” Alice asked
doubtfully.
“Of course it must,” Humpty Dumpty said, with a short laugh. “My
name means the shape I am and a good handsome shape it is, too. With a
name like yours, you might be any shape.”
—LEWIS CARROLL, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland The self is like a
bug. Every time you smack it, it moves to another place.
—PAT STEIR
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Epigraphs
Introduction
Chapter 1
Anne, Charlotte, and Emily Brontë & Acton, Currer, and Ellis Bell (1816–1855)
“Once there were five sisters. . . .”
Chapter 2
George Sand & Aurore Dupin (1804–1876)
“It began with an ankle-length gray military coat, matching trousers, a cravat,
and a waistcoat. . . .”
Chapter 3
George Eliot & Marian Evans (1819–1880)
“Charles Dickens was suspicious. . . .”
Chapter 4
Lewis Carroll & Charles Dodgson (1832–1898)
“A show of hands if you’ve never heard of Alice in Wonderland. . . .”
Chapter 5
Mark Twain & Samuel Clemens (1835–1910)
“How the protean Samuel Clemens became the world’s most famous literary
alias will never be known for sure. . . .”
Chapter 6
O. Henry & William Sydney Porter (1862–1910)
“If you are now reading or have recently read a short story by O. Henry, you are
most likely a middle-school student. . . .”
Chapter 7
Fernando Pessoa & His Heteronyms (1888–1935)
“You will never get to the bottom of Fernando Pessoa. . . .”
Chapter 8
George Orwell & Eric Blair (1903–1950)
“Had Eric Arthur Blair been a working-class bloke from Birmingham instead of
an Old Etonian . . .”
Chapter 9
Isak Dinesen & Karen Blixen (1885–1962)
“She was descended from Danish royalty, but her childhood was filled with the
traditional privileges of an aristocratic upbringing. . . .”
Chapter 10
Sylvia Plath & Victoria Lucas (1932–1963)
“She was a good girl who loved her mother. . . .”
Chapter 11
Henry Green & Henry Yorke (1905–1973)
“He’s the best writer you’ve never heard of. . . .”
Chapter 12
Romain Gary & Émile Ajar (1914–1980)
“He was a war hero, a Ping-Pong champion, a film director, a diplomat, and an
author who wrote the best-selling French novel of the twentieth century. . . .”
Chapter 13
James Tiptree, Jr. & Alice Sheldon (1915–1987)
“On May 19, 1987, a seventy-one-year-old woman and her eighty-four-year-old
husband were found lying in bed together, hand in hand, dead of gunshot
wounds. . . .”
Chapter 14
Georges Simenon & Christian Brulls et al. (1903–1989)
“He claimed to have had sex with ten thousand women. . . .”
Chapter 15
Patricia Highsmith & Claire Morgan (1921–1995)
“She was one of the most wretched people you could ever meet, with mood shifts
that swung as wildly as the stock market. . . .”
Chapter 16
Pauline Réage & Dominique Aury (1907–1998)
“Not many authors can boast of having written a best-selling pornographic
novel. . . .”
Acknowledgments
Time Line
Bibliography
Epigraph
About the Author
Credits
Copyright
About the Publisher