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Exploring the fascinating stories of more than a dozen authorial impostors across several centuries and cultures, Carmela Ciuraru plumbs the creative process and the darker, often crippling aspects of fame.
Only through the protective guise of Lewis Carroll could a shy, half-deaf Victorian mathematician at Oxford feel free to let his imagination run wild. The three weird sisters from Yorkshire—the Brontës—produced instant bestsellers that transformed them into literary icons, yet they wrote under the cloak of male authorship. Bored by her aristocratic milieu, a cigar-smoking, cross-dressing baroness rejected the rules of propriety by having sexual liaisons with men and women alike, publishing novels and plays under the name George Sand. Highly accessible and engaging, these provocative stories reveal the complex motives of writers who harbored secret identities—sometimes playfully, sometimes with terrible anguish and tragic consequences. Part detective story, part exposé, part literary history, Nom de Plume is an absorbing psychological meditation on identity and creativity.
Praise for Nom de Plume
A San Francisco Chronicle Best Book of the Year
"Each page affords sparkling facts and valuable insights into . . . the eternally mysterious, often tormented interface between life and literature." —Elif Batuman
"A richly documented literary excursion into the inner, secret lives of some of our favorite writers." —Joyce Carol Oates
"You are on the second to last page . . . and wishing you weren't because this book is such great fun." —San Francisco Chronicle
"[An] engrossing, well-paced literary history. . . . It's biography on the quick, and done well." —Bookforum
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
August 18, 2023 -
Formats
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Kindle Book
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OverDrive Read
- ISBN: 9780062109569
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EPUB ebook
- ISBN: 9780062109569
- File size: 1162 KB
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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April 4, 2011
Ciuraru (Solitude Poems) includes 18 writersâfrom George Sand to George Orwellâin her lively literati masquerade party, recounting events that led to their pen names along with intriguing peeks behind their masks. In 1899, William Sydney Porter began writing as O. Henry: "Because he used an intermediary in New Orleans to submit his stories to editors, no one knew they were by a convicted felon." Eric Blair became George Orwell with his first book, Down and Out in Paris and London, telling his publisher, "I am not proud of it." An outstanding chapter details how Alice Sheldon spotted "Tiptree" on a marmalade jar and then fooled the science fiction community for years as James Tiptree Jr. When the ruse was revealed, "She was crushed to find that some of the male writers she'd considered friends... turned their backs on her." Patricia Highsmith used another name on her lesbian novel and wrote for comic books, but since she gave her credits to The Who's Who of American Comic Books, it's quite a stretch to call that a "secret life." Otherwise, this survey of authors who sought anonymity and privacy is well researched. Amid informative, illuminating profiles, Ciuraru successfully ferrets out curious literary charades.
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