What’s in a Name?

In earlier times, many female authors had to conceal their identities to continue their passion of writing in a strict patriarchal society. Numerous incidents where writings of women were rejected because of their gender, without the works being read actually. Apart from the obstacle in publishing their works, the pseudonyms have helped them in gaining large readership. Below are some women who used a different name for their writings:

The Brontë Sisters

The infamous Bronte sisters wouldn’t have gained the popularity with their original names. Charlotte Brontë sent a selection of her poems to the poet laureate Robert Southey for comment. In his letter to Charlotte, he advised against the notion of women pursuing a career in literature, commenting “Literature cannot be the business of a woman’s life, and it ought not to be. The more she is engaged in her proper duties, the less leisure she will have for it even as an accomplishment and a recreation”. Therefore, the three sisters adopted the pen names of Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell to publish their works. Despite facing these obstacles, the sisters have given us gems like Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. Their identities were only revealed after the demise of Emily and Ann.

J K Rowling

We all know her as an extremely successful woman behind the bestselling Harry Potter series. What we may not know is abbreviating Joanne Rowling and adding a ‘K’ was a deliberate move. Her publisher, Barry Cunningham suggested that the male readers of her target audience would be discouraged to buy a female authored book. . For her second book, The Cuckoo’s Calling, Rowling went with a new male pen-name, Robert Galbraith. When her identity was revealed by The Times, the book received a lot of criticism and the sales dropped significantly.

George Eliot

Mary Ann Evans, more popularly known as George Eliot wrote an essay called Silly Novels by Lady Novelists and published it in the Westminster Review. She describes that women in such novels are often portrayed as educated women who are superficial and not independent. During her era books written by women were rejected by male readers, presuming them to be of romantic genre. Therefore, she published her first novel, Adam Bede, under the pseudonym of George Eliot and interestingly, continued to use the pseudonym in her consequent written work

George Sand

Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin published Indiana, her first novel, under the name George Sand. The book is a tale of a noblewoman who leaves her husband and moves from colonial Africa to France in the search of love. This book made her one of France’s most renowned novelists and memoirists. She never shied away from breaking pre-existing gender norms and wore men’s clothing and smoked in public. A true icon indeed.

A.M. Barnard

Louisa May Alcott under the pen name A.M. Barnard gave us a heart-touching portrayal of sisterhood through Little Women. However, much before its publication, she was exploring a completely different genre and penned several gothic novels. Louisa’s identity remained a secret decades after her death and was later on revealed by a scholar called Leona Rostenberg.

Harper Lee

Widely known for her novel How to Kill a Mockingbird, Nelle Harper Lee let go of her first name while writing to avoid gender-related prejudice. Back in the 1960s, the publishing circles were male dominated hence there was less scope for success of a female authored book.