Curated playlist
20th-century pseudonymous writers
- Stephen KingA minivan hit Stephen King on a Maine road in June 1999. A dog in the back distracted the driver.
- Mark TwainMark Twain predicted he would die with Halley's Comet, and he did. He died the day after it passed closest to the Sun.
- George OrwellGeorge Orwell was a pen name, chosen from a shortlist in 1932. He was born Eric Arthur Blair in British India.
- C. S. LewisC. S. Lewis died the same afternoon President Kennedy was shot. His death was almost swallowed by the news from Dallas.
- Agatha ChristieAgatha Christie vanished for 11 days in 1926, and a nationwide manhunt followed. She was found at a Harrogate hotel.
- Dr. SeussAn education publisher dared Dr. Seuss to write a book children can't put down. The result was The Cat in the Hat.
- HergéHergé was arrested the day after Brussels was liberated in 1944. He had drawn Tintin for a Nazi-controlled paper.
- Ian MacDonaldIan MacDonald, the English music critic, was born Ian MacCormick and wrote under a name that was not quite his own. Behind the pseudonym stood a man who studied at Cambridge, edited for a music weekly, wrote song lyrics, and even played…
- Stan LeeStan Lee used a pen name because comic books embarrassed him. He wanted his real name saved for a novel he never wrote.
- Margaret MitchellMargaret Mitchell used part of her unfinished novel to prop up a wobbly couch.
- Zodiac KillerA letter postmarked the 29th of January 1974 reached the San Francisco Chronicle and ended with a tally: Me = 37, SFPD = 0. The writer was the Zodiac Killer, an unidentified serial killer who treated the San Francisco Police Department as…
- Vladimir NabokovNovelist Vladimir Nabokov also named butterfly species, and later genetic research backed his theory.
- C. L. R. JamesC. L. R. James sent a book on Moby-Dick to every U.S. senator. He wrote it while detained on Ellis Island in 1953.
- Louis-Ferdinand CélineManuscripts of French novelist Céline, missing since 1944, were handed to police in March 2020.
- Vladimir LeninLenin's name came from no person, and the N in N. Lenin stood for nothing. One theory points to the Lena River.
- Anna AkhmatovaAnna Akhmatova wrote poems on scraps of paper that visitors read and then burned in her stove.
- Andrei BelyIn Andrei Bely's novel Petersburg, a young man is assigned to kill his own father. The target is a government official.
- Dave WolvertonDave Wolverton chose a second name partly because of where books were placed in bookstores. He was born John David Wolverton, and he published as both Dave Wolverton and David Farland. His reasoning was practical. A fantasy author needed a…
- Michael CrichtonMichael Crichton once submitted a George Orwell essay as his own and got a B-minus.
- Kaoru KurimotoKaoru Kurimoto won two major literary prizes in two years under two names. Both were the same woman.
- Michael MoorcockMichael Moorcock created Elric as a reversal of the comfort fantasy that followed Tolkien.
- Ryukishi07Ryukishi07 dreamed of making video games but could not get hired by any game company.
- Yukio MishimaYukio Mishima shouted to soldiers from a Tokyo balcony in 1970, then killed himself.
- Maxim GorkyWriter Maxim Gorky visited a Soviet labor camp that had been staged for him, and he did not notice.
- BuronsonBuronson joined Japan's air force to escape poverty and ended up writing Fist of the North Star.
- Neil deGrasse TysonNeil deGrasse Tyson was nine years old when he visited the sky theater of the Hayden Planetarium in New York. He grew up to be an American astrophysicist, author and science communicator, born on the 5th of October 1958. Looking back, he…
- Jeanine DelpechJeanine Delpech published under at least six different names. Some were masculine pen names.
- Alan Dean FosterThe 1976 Star Wars novel carried only George Lucas's name, but Alan Dean Foster wrote it. He was hired as a ghostwriter.