Writing and publishing a book is not always easy. In the past, women in order to enter professionally the literature world had many times to change or hide their names. In other cases, authors chose to use pseudonyms so as not to be in fear of being judged or even convicted in case they wanted to express freely their opinion on politics, or social and financial issues. Thus, this is how pen names were created.

Some of the women that fall in the first category have created some of the most well-known and successful books of all time. For example, in the 19th century, the Brontë sisters had to change their names to Currer Bell (for Charlotte) and Ellis Bell (for Emily). These two sisters wrote classic books, like Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë and Wuthering Heights by Emily. Another famous writer that used a pen name in the early 20th century was Agatha Christie, who used the pseudonym of Mary Westmacotts for almost 20 years so as to be able to write “bitter-sweet stories about love”, which included Giant’s Bread, Absent in the Spring and The Rose and the Yew Tree among others. However, this kind of gender discrimination is not absent nowadays, as one of the most prolific and profitable writers of ever, J. K. Rowling (Joanne Rowling), adopted her gender-neutral pseudonym in the 1990s to ensure her works  such as Harry Potter, Fantastic Beasts and The Tales of  Beedle the Bard appealed to boy readers. She also wrote crime fiction novels such as Silkworm, The Cuckoo’s Calling, Career of Evil, using a second pen name, Robert Galbraith . 

On the other hand, people who criticize society were also usually forced to create their alter egos mainly to avoid their families to be put the blame on. The vast majority of them are satirical comic artists, like Dr. Seuss (real name Theodor Seuss Geisel), a pseudonym he used so as to continue to be able to write to his college humor magazine after his punishment for drinking alcohol. A second example is the well known Quino (Joaquín Salvador Lavado Tejón), the Argentinian comic artist of Mafalda, a masterful satire of Argentinian middle class and progressive youth. Furthermore, a very famous comic artist who combines humor and deep philosophical questions is the Greek cartoonist Arkas (it has the same root with sarcastic and they both mean make fun of something), who interacts for exactly 40 years with the art of comics, but his real name remains unknown. Another famous Greek writer, Emmanuel Rhoides, used almost 33 pen names. Rhoides wrote a very avant-garde and bold book in the early 19th century, The Papess Joanne, which tells the story of a woman who pretended to be a man and managed to become a Pope. As we can easily understand, this was very frustrating for the old-fashioned Church and as a consequence they expelled this book. Rhoides in order to continue to be able to write and criticize the public and political life of Greece used pen names to avoid being negatively judged by the audience.

Therefore, we strongly advocate that people should have the right to freely express themselves, but it is also important to be careful when you write a particular book about controversial issues, want to keep your real identity secret or just separate your career from your personal life. This requires a lot of self control and confidence, organization and logistic skills. Otherwise also unexpected legal problems could appear, especially in the digital era in which every pen name corresponds to a particular brand with complex dynamics linked to it. Here is reported an example of this phenomena: the lawyer who revealed J.K.Rowling was the person behind the pseudonym of Robert Galbraith was fined about $ 1.500 and scolded for breaking clients’ confidentiality.

To sum up, the choice between signing your works with your real name or creating a stage one can be very hard as each one of the two options has both positive and negative aspects. It is impossible to advise every writer about the right choice, and we hope we helped in getting a general overview of the most important elements to care about with this post.