The story behind a pen name podcast Hello and welcome to this podcast brought to you by That's English!, the Spanish Ministry of Education's official distance learning English course. To find out more about That's English! go to www.thatsenglish.com or contact your local Official School of Languages. Kate: Hi Drew! Sorry I'm late. Drew: Hi Kate. Don't worry. Was the traffic bad this morning? Kate: Oh, it's been terrible. There's was a 10-mile tailback on the A4 motorway because a lorry had apparently overturned and shed its load. Drew: What a pain! Well, now you're here...Would you like some coffee? Kate: No, thanks. Let's get started. I don't want to keep you waiting any longer. Drew: Right-e-o...Well, while I was waiting for you, I've been reading different articles about famous writers' pen names, or noms de plume, as they are also called, to prepare for our class about why authors use pseudonyms. Kate: What I've learnt is that a lot of them appear to have been women. As Virginia Woolf said: For most of history, Anonymous was a woman. Drew: I think that, in fact, is a misquote. Just a second, I have it here, yes...What she actually wrote was: I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman." Kate: Oh, I didn't know that was a misquote. You can find that quote all over the Internet. Drew: Well, that just goes to show you can't trust everything you read, especially on the Internet. Kate: Indeed. In any case, it's a proven fact that many female authors have adopted male pseudonyms in order to hide their gender and so avoid prejudice when society considered it to be unfeminine for a woman to be a writer. Look at the Brontë sisters, for example. Drew: Yes, that's right. I've discovered that Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë wrote under the names of Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell. Each pseudonym started with the same initial as each of the sisters' real names. Kate: Yes, but it says in an article here that, once their works had started to become well-known, Charlotte and Anne decided to reveal their true identities. Apparently, they found out that some critics actually believed that someone called Currer Bell had written their novels, Jane Eyre and Agnes Grey, as well as their sister Emily's Wuthering Heights. I can imagine that critics and readers alike must have been more than surprised to discover that Mr Currer Bell was a woman, or should I say three women! Drew: Yes, it must have caused quite a stir...But, even today, it would appear that some female authors still have to disguise their gender. Look at J.K. Rowling, for instance. Her publishers felt that her books wouldn't be read by boys if they knew that the author was a woman. So that's why Joanne Rowling signed the Harry Potter series as J.K. Rowling. Kate: And what does the "K" stand for? Drew: For Kathleen, after her grandmother. The publishers thought it sounded more masculine to use two initials. Kate: How sad! Drew: What? Kate: Well, the fact that even today a young lad will find a book unattractive simply because it's written by a woman. Drew: Well, they probably think it'll be too girly. Boys will be boys... Kate: Yes, I suppose so... Drew: I've also found out that Rowling adopted a second pen name, Robert Galbraith, when she published The Cuckoo's Calling in 2013. Apparently, she wanted to have a fresh start and receive "totally unvarnished feedback." But her anonymity didn't last long...probably for financial purposes, and the book is now published under the name of J.K. Rowling. Kate: Another very famous and successful writer who did something similar was Agatha Christie. Drew: Did she use a pen name? I didn't know that. Kate: Oh yes. She published six novels under the pseudonym of Mary Westmacott. Drew: And why did she do that? Kate: Well, because these were romance novels, and she didn't want to disappoint her fans, who considered her the Queen of Crime. Apparently, it took twenty years for Mary Westmacott's true identity to be revealed, and even then, Agatha Christie published two more novels under this pseudonym. Drew: Funny...That reminds of Stephen King. You know he also adopted the nom de plume of Richard Bachman. Kate: Was that also because he wanted to write a different genre, like Agatha Christie? Drew: No. In his case, it was because he is such a prolific writer that he wanted to publish more novels than his publishers recommended. They felt that one book a year was the maximum he should publish if he didn't want to saturate the Stephen King brand. So,he wrote several novels under the pseudonym of Richard Bachman. In fact, Bachman became a sort of alter ego, with King faking his pseudonym's biographical details and even publishing a bogus photograph on the cover of one of his novels. Kate: So how was Richard Bachman's true identity revealed? Drew: Well, I've read that a very clever guy, who worked in a bookstore in Washington D.C., noted the similarities in style between King and Bachman. His suspicions led him to check Richard Bachman out in the Library of Congress and there he discovered that the true author of Bachman's books was actually Stephen King. Kate: It sounds like this guy was a real sleuth. So what did Stephen King do? Drew: Well, he decided to kill Richard Bachman off, saying that he had died of "cancer of the pseudonym." Kate: How ingenious! Drew: Absolutely! Kate: Well, another well-known author who I really like and who also published his works using a pseudonym was George Orwell. Drew: You mean the author of Animal Farm and 1984? Kate: Yes, that's right. Orwell's real name was Eric Blair. Drew: Wow! And why did he use a pen name? Kate: Well, it was a decision he made when his first book, Down and Out in Paris and London was published. As the book is an account of his own personal experience living in extreme poverty, he decided to use a pseudonym to avoid his family any embarrassment. Apparently, he chose the name George, after Saint George, patron saint of England and Orwell, after the River Orwell in Suffolk, as it was a place he loved to visit. Drew: How very English! This association with a river reminds me of Mark Twain, which, as you probably know, was also a pseudonym for...Wait a minute...What was Mark Twain's real name?...Oh yeah, Samuel Langhorne Clemens. Wow! My English teacher would be proud of me!...Anyway...The thing is he adopted this pen name from his experience as a steamboat pilot on the Mississippi River. They used to have to keep measuring the depth of the river to see whether it was safe to navigate and "mark twain" meant "mark number two." That would be two fathoms, or just over three and a half metres, which meant that the river was deep enough to continue sailing. So "mark twain" was meant as a symbol for the life along the Mississippi River that the writer immortalized in his writing. Kate: That is so true. I just loved reading The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn when I was little. They were two of my favourite books. Well, Drew, I think we've got enough examples to be going on with for our class. What do you think? Drew: More than enough, I'd say! We shouldn't bite off more than we can chew!! Kate: That's right! Enough is as good as a feast! Drew: We hope you have found this podcast interesting. See you later! We hope you have enjoyed this podcast, brought to you by That's English! Please follow us on Facebook and Twitter. We look forward to hearing from you. Bye for now! Sources: https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2012/04/the-strange-stories-behind-famous-writers-pen-names/255619/#slide1 http://manybooks.net/articles/10-famous-authors-who-wrote-under-pen-names