George Eliot, if you're not familiar, is the pseudonym of the 19th century woman Marian Evans (or Mary Anne, or Mary Ann... because the woman seriously changed her name all the time.)
I'm in the middle of researching and writing a paper about 19th century women who wrote under male pseudonyms, and the three I'm focusing on are Marian Evans (George Eliot), Charlotte Bronte (Currer Bell), and Olive Schreiner (Ralph Iron). Setting out, I didn't think I would have as much fun as I have the last few weeks, but it's been rather delightful delving into books, biographies, and letters. Of course it's not nearly as much fun as writing a paper about Elvish, but 19th century fiction is a close second for me in terms of literary taste!
The paper itself isn't too much, really: 12-15 pages. While I used to have trouble reaching that limit, I find I'm having trouble confining myself to it. I think I might have done too much research. I'm 13 pages in at the moment and I haven't written an introduction, have barely touched the conclusion, but have five solid middle sections about the three women, the state of the novel at the time, and a brief history of pseudonyms. The thing is, none of those sections are quite finished yet... do you think my professor will give me a page limit extension?
While I've been researching, I've been learning a great deal of things about pseudonyms and my authors. Here are a couple things I hope you find interesting, too!
-"Anonym" is totally a word! Which make sense, of course, given that "pseudonym" is also a word, but I don't think I've ever heard it used. It's always "This is an anonymous work" or "Published anonymously".
-Upon showing her father her wildly popular novel Jane Eyre (which was devoured by the literary public in both England and America - and apparently even Queen Victoria read it), Charlotte Bronte's father read it, called her sisters (also published authors) into the room and said (and here I will paraphrase) "Do you girls know that your sister wrote a novel and it actually doesn't suck?"
-19th century newspapers had gossip columns about "Literary and Art Gossip". Let's go back to that and leave "lose fifteen pounds in fifteen minutes!"and "did someone who we don't care about cheat on another person we don't care about?" columns behind!
-Some writers have employed upwards of 100 pseudonyms (here I am thinking about Kierkegaard and Voltaire).
-There are dictionaries about pseudonyms! As in, you look up a name and it tells you who it was! And there's a whole SHELF of them in one of the UT libraries! (Guess who had a field day in the dictionary section the other day!)
-Stephen King used the pseudonym "Richard Bachman" for a while in the late 1970s. He was found out in 1985 by a nosy reporter, and later issued a notice of Bachman's death from "cancer of the pseudonym". King then dedicated The Dark Half (apparently about a pen name that assumes a sinister life of its own) in 1989 to "the late Richard Bachman".
Tomorrow I have to bring a rough draft of the paper to class, and I hope I'll get a chance to talk to my professor about it, because I worry about these things. I've put so much effort into it so far, and if he tells me I have to scrap it and start over I might not survive the next week!
Something fun I will do when I have to turn it in next Friday is turn in the paper pseudonymously. Because, come on - You can't write a paper about pseudonyms without using one yourself! I have borrowed some names for this purpose. While of course my real name will be on the paper (the last thing I want is to not receive credit for it!) the title page will read:
The Nineteenth Century Nom de Plume: An Exploration of Women and their Pseudonyms
By Alex L. Ross
"Alex" is a nod to my darling brother, whose middle name is Alexander.
"L" is for "Lee", a middle name my mother's family is particularly fond of.
and
"Ross" is the last name of one of my characters in the story I'm writing. I'm particularly attached to her, so I hope she doesn't mind if I borrow it for a while. :)
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Expect a really sappy blog to come in the next week or so, in which I will lament (and celebrate) my LAST WEEK OF UNDERGRADUATE STUDY.
3 comments:
Interesting! Really enjoyed the information. I guess the pseudonyms for writing are the precursors to all our current day web identities.
Can't believe you are finished with college already! Have so enjoyed following along!
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