Volume 1

Dictionary of anonymous and pseudonymous English literature / Samuel Halkett and John Laing.

  • Samuel Halkett
Date:
1926-[1962]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Dictionary of anonymous and pseudonymous English literature / Samuel Halkett and John Laing. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    writers who give merely one or more letters of each name with intervening blanks which can easily be supplied by friends of the author cognisant of the subjects which specially occupy his attention : they would thus easily recognise as his the views expressed in print. An example is, An Enquiry into a late, very extraordinary physical transaction at E—n \Eton\ ... By “ Ch-B-n ” [Charles Bateman] (1758). Again, a number of authors retain an anterior portion of their real name and append to this a local term indicating the place of their birth, or a region in which they afterwards lived. Mrs Elizabeth Penrose {nte Cartwright) lived many years with relatives in the village of Markham, Nottinghamshire, and made herself widely known during the past century as “ Mrs Markham,” author of a History of England, and afterwards of a History of France. “John Strathesk” is the pen-name of John Tod, who resided in the valley of the Midlothian Esk and composed Bits from Blinkbonny, More bits from Blinkbonny, etc. “ N. D’Anvers” is Nancy Meugens, a native of Antwerp, who came to England and married Arthur Bell. “ Marianne Farningham ” is Mary Anne Hearne, of Farning- ham. “ Hesba Stretton” is Sarah Smith, the third, in age, of five sisters whose initials, arranged in order from Hannah, the eldest, to the youngest, form the pre-name “ Hesba,” while the pseudo family name is derived from Church-Stretton, where they have spent most of their lives. Other writers who have indicated the locality with which they have long been connected are William Sidney Gibson, of Newcastle-on-Tyne, who, as “William De Tyne,” published The Day after to-morrow (1858); Thomas Powell, who half conceals himself on the title-page of Edgar a?id Elfrida (1790), under the pen-name of “Taliessen De Monmouth”; and “ J. B. Selkirk,” author of Bible Truths with Shakespeare Parallels and Poems. This last writer, whose name was James Brown, has incorporated in his pseudonym, not only his Christian name and place of residence, as in the previous instances, but his surname as well. The reasons why those who write under pseudonyms finally fixed on those which they bear are often obscure; in a few cases, however, the account given seems so probable that it may be accepted as correct. “John Oliver Hobbes,” it is said, decided on adopting the first word because it was the name of her father, and then added the second because it was the name of her son; the third component was taken from Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury, the philosopher, for whom she had a profound respect, and because it was “homely.” “John Strange Winter” was not fixed by the writer herself but by her publishers, who would not send out her first book bearing the name of a woman. The pen-name “Sarah Tytler” was also imposed on Henrietta Keddie by her publishers.