Have you heard of the author J.K. Rowling, the author of the Harry Potter series? Or of Lewis Carroll, the writer of Alice in Wonderland? If you have, did you know that J.K. Rowling was a woman? Or that Lewis Carroll was actually a noted mathematician by the name of Charles Dogson? And why do authors such as these use these false “pen names?” All will be explained.
The first reason that some authors use pen names is to conceal their identity or gender. In the case of J.K. Rowling, her publishers were afraid that the presumed audience of the Harry Potter series (young boys) wouldn’t take the book seriously if they knew it was written by a woman (Source 1). So Joanne Rowling became J.K. Rowling, even though it wouldn’t have made too much of a difference. Rowling’s books were enjoyed by boys and girls of all ages, including adults.
A second reason that some authors use false names is to avoid being stereotyped. For example, Charlotte Bronte, otherwise known as her pen name, Currer Bell, the writer of Jayne Eyre, was a Victorian woman (Source 2). There were lots of expectations and restrictions on Victorian women. Because of this, Bronte needed a way to get unbiased feedback, avoid being stereotyped, and have people like
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Stephen King used a pen name, Richard Bachman, to do just that. When King started writing, it was common practice for publishers to only release one book per year. Using the Bachman name, he could publish books twice as often (Source 4). He not only used the pen name to publish more books, he also braced the pen name as a tool to “[allow] him to analyze his own success in his writing career…” (Source 4). For example, Thinner, a book that was published under Richard Bachman’s name, sold close to 28,000 copies. But when it was published as a Stephen King book, it sold more than ten times what the Bachman version did. At the end of it all, he used a pen name, and that is what we are focused