There are stages when many of us want to hide behind a cloak and not let the world see who we are. The reasons may be varied, but the desire is the same. It happens to most of us at some time or the other. It’s how we come out and face the world as ourselves that is ultimately important. For those of us who may happen to be going through some such thing, let’s take heart from the fact that many a celebrity goes through such phases too. Let’s take the case of four celebrated writers who hid first behind the cloak of a non de plume (pen name) or a pseudonym. Some of them emerged as the identity that they are known by today.

The daughter of a Warwickshire estate manager, Mary Ann Evans, an assistant editor of the Westminster Review chose to front herself with a man’s name. She penned wonderful fiction such as Silas Marner, the story of a miser and a foundling he took into his home; Adam Bede; Middlemarch and Daniel Deronda. Her most well known work was The Mill on the Floss, a novel with an autobiographical element. Made the guess? It was George Eliot, who for whatever reasons chose a man’s identity for her existence in the literary world.

There was another who wrote a novel, which is now very popular. Since she didn’t want people to know that she was a woman, when she first wrote Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte assumed the name Currer Bell. Her two famous sisters Emily Bronte, author of Wuthering Heights, and Anne Bronte who wrote Tenant of Wildfell Hall also assumed pen names Emily’s was Ellis Bell and Anne chose to be called Acton Bell. They were the daughters of Patrick Bronte.

There appeared a series of articles on London life that went by the name Sketches of Boz. The series was written by a reporter in the House of Commons, who later emerged as Charles Dickens, one of the best writers in England. Who hasn’t heard of Nicholas Nickleby, A Tale of two Cities, and Oliver Twist?

Charlotte Bronte