Curated category
20th-century pseudonymous writers
- Stephen KingStephen King was walking on the shoulder of Maine State Route 5 on the 19th of June 1999 when a minivan struck him and sent him into a depression in the…
- Mark TwainMark Twain was born on the 30th of November 1835, shortly after Halley's Comet swept past the Earth, and he came to believe the two of them were bound…
- George OrwellGeorge Orwell did not exist on any birth certificate. The man behind the name was Eric Arthur Blair, born on the 25th of June 1903 in Motihari, in the Bengal…
- C. S. LewisC. S. Lewis collapsed in his bedroom at 5:30 pm on the 22nd of November 1963, and died a few minutes later at age 64. That same afternoon, approximately 55…
- Agatha ChristieAgatha Christie holds a record no living novelist can claim: more than two billion copies of her books sold, making her the best-selling fiction writer of…
- Dr. SeussTheodor Seuss Geisel was born on the 2nd of March, 1904, on Fairfield Street in Springfield, Massachusetts, within walking distance of a road called Mulberry…
- HergéGeorges Prosper Remi signed the first 500 copies of Tintin in the Land of the Soviets using the signature of his own fictional creation.
- Ian MacDonaldIan MacCormick entered the world on the 3rd of October 1948 in London. He attended Dulwich College before moving to King's College, Cambridge.
- Stan LeeStan Lee signed off his monthly column with a single word: "Excelsior!" It is also the New York state motto, which suited a man born Stanley Martin Lieber on…
- Margaret MitchellMargaret Mitchell wrote exactly one published novel in her lifetime, and it sold a million copies in its first six months.
- Vladimir NabokovVladimir Nabokov arrived in the United States in May 1940 aboard the SS Champlain, a Russian exile who spoke three languages and had already written nine…
- C. L. R. JamesC. L. R. James was born on the 4th of January 1901 in Tunapuna, a small town in Trinidad and Tobago, then a British Crown colony.
- Louis-Ferdinand CélineLouis-Ferdinand Céline completed the second draft of his final novel on the 30th of June 1961. He died at home the very next day, of a ruptured aneurysm.
- Vladimir LeninVladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, the man the world would come to know as Vladimir Lenin, took the name from no person at all. He first used it in December 1901, and…
- Anna AkhmatovaAnna Akhmatova chose a Tatar surname for herself because her father refused to see any verses printed under his "respectable" name.
- Andrei BelyAndrei Bely was born Boris Nikolaevich Bugaev in Moscow, into a household where intellectual life was the air everyone breathed.
- Dave WolvertonJohn David Wolverton arrived in Springfield, Oregon on the 28th of May 1957. His family moved to a farm in Monroe when he was six years old.
- Michael CrichtonMichael Crichton stood 6 feet 9 inches tall, and he spent much of his life feeling out of place because of it. That restlessness never left him.
- Kaoru KurimotoKaoru Kurimoto was still in her twenties when she became the youngest person ever to win the Edogawa Rampo Prize. That happened in 1978, just one year after…
- Michael MoorcockMichael Moorcock was born on the 18th of December 1939 in Mitcham, Surrey, and before he ever entered primary school he had already read Edgar Rice…
- Ryukishi07Ryukishi07 studied at a vocational school that specializes in art. He wrote doujinshi while having interests in anime, manga and video games.
- Yukio MishimaOn the 25th of November 1970, Yukio Mishima stepped onto a balcony at a military base in central Tokyo and shouted to the soldiers below, "Where has the…
- Maxim GorkyMaxim Gorky was born Alexei Maximovich Peshkov in Nizhny Novgorod, and by the time he died in June 1936, his ashes were carried through Moscow by Joseph…
- BuronsonBuronson was born on the 16th of June 1947, in Saku, Nagano, the youngest of six children in a farming family. His name is not one most listeners will…
- Jeanine DelpechJeanine Louise Nelly Delpech entered the world on the 1st of August 1905 at the Château du Prieuré in Évecquemont. Her father Edmond Jean Frédéric Marie…
- Alan Dean FosterAlan Dean Foster, born on the 18th of November 1946, is the kind of writer whose name you might not immediately recognize, but whose words you have almost…