Super Glossary

Pen Name

Entertainment / Literature / Pen Name: Another term for nom de plume. The word indicates a fictitious name that a writer employs to conceal his or her identity. For example, Samuel Clemens used the pen name 'Mark Twain.' William Sydney Porter wrote his short stories under the pen name 'O. Henry.' Mary Ann Cross used the pen name 'George Eliot' to hide that she was a female writer, just as science-fiction writer Alice Bradley Sheldon used the pen name 'James Tiptree, Junior.' Ben Franklin used a variety of pen names such as 'Silence Do-good,' Jonathan Swift once used the name Lemuel Gulliver, and so on. Writers might choose to use a pen name as a way to keep a certain name associated with certain types of work, so that a writer might use one name for westerns and another name for science fiction novels. Other authors might seek to hide their identity to avoid negative repercussions (such as hate-mail, imprisonment, lynch-mobs, or even execution--all of these misfortunes can and do occur to authors, especially those writing in totalitarian regimes).
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