Doing the research for my volumes of Victorian ghost literature by women writers, one of the biggest challenges I face is trying to decipher who writers are when they use a pseudonym, or worse, are labeled as 'anonymous'.
The reasons for taking on a different name in those days were many. It could be that you wanted to air your grievances with someone, but to do so under your own name could bring ruin to your good name or you wanted to write something that wasn't romantic fiction and women just weren't taken seriously as men at writing.
Many of the pen names have been revealed - some during the author's lives - some after their deaths, but the fact that Mary Ann Evans wrote one of the finest novels in existence, Middlemarch, under the name George Eliot, was probably influenced by the fact she critiqued the 'Belle Lettres' section of The Westminster Review which was more commonly known as 'Silly Novels by Lady Novelists' section - and when Eliot was born, it gave distance between her work and her sex.
Today is the 96th anniversary of the death of Dorothy Henrietta (Havers) Boulger, more commonly known as Theo Gift. As Gift she wrote a rather excellent supernatural collection called Not For the Night-Time (1889) which was discovered by noted anthologist Richard Dalby and re-published in 2000 by Sarob Press with an essay by Dalby on what he had uncovered about her. I did a bit of rooting about in the archives today and I was thrilled to uncover a lost/uncollected short story by Gift called 'The Grey Nun of Birstone' (1888), published only one year before her collection. I don't know why it didn't make it into her book, but I'm proud to announce I'm squeezing it into my Remember the Dead anthology that's coming out later on this year.
I found another Theo Gift related article today - originally published in the Daily Colonist, a Canadian newspaper, dated 1909 and reproduced in full below. In it several female authors give reasons why they wrote under male pen names, including Theo Gift. It gives a fascinating insight into the mountains female writers had to climb in those days. It will not escape your notice that many of the women's names who are discussing their pen names are those of their husband, as was the way back then - which can add yet another obstacle for many modern researchers when presented with unknown authors).
WHY MEN'S NAMES ARE TAKEN
The Daily Colonist (25.03.1909)
The custom of adopting men's names is still very common among women who are authors. The following reasons for doing so, given by some English writers will be read with interest.
Some interesting reasons why novelists choose to write under masculine names are given by a number of famous English writers as follows:
Charles Marlowe (Miss Harriet Jays) - I write plays under the name of Charles Marlowe because being a novelist as well as a dramatist, I think it better to keep the one quite distinct from the other. My reason for choosing this particular name is simple. When the idea of using a dramatic non de plume first occurred to me, I happened to be writing a comedy which was afterward produced at the vaudeville theatre under the title of 'Fascination'. The leading part in this play - that of a girl who impersonates a boy - I created myself and made in it a great success. The name of the girl was Lady Madge Hazleton, that of the boy Charles Marlow and I have used the name ever since.
John Strange Winter (Mrs. Arthur Stannard) - On the whole, I think it is to a woman's advantage to write as a man, as it may convey an idea to some people that she is not good enough to stand on her own personality. The bitter truth was that my first publisher refused to bring out Cavalry Life under a feminine name. I have no doubt they were wise, and though I did not relish it, I was enough of a Yorkshire woman to recognize which side of my bread was buttered, With regard to the actual choice of the pen-name, one of the stories in Cavalry Life was told in the first person and the character was Coret John Strange Winter. After some consideration, I thought I could not do better than credit this imaginary character with other stories also.
George Frost (Mrs. Octavius Eddison) - I write under a man's name because I believe a woman's work is handicapped by the mere fact of her sex. The voteless woman witnesses to the injustice of men, and injustice which is dealt to women by editors and publishers in common with other men. The use of a male pen-name gives a writer a better chance of publication and a fair payment.
Theo. Gift (Mrs. D.H. Bulger) - My reasons for talking 'Theo. Gift' as a pseudonym were simple. When I began to write novels and publish them - 36 years ago - I was young girl, and at that date, girls were neither hardened to outside opinions nor as independent of their elders as they are now. If I had attempted to make a name for myself in the literary world under my own patronymic and had been ill-received it would have been felt I had disgraced the family name. So I took a pseudonym, which after all, was my own already. My name is Dorothy, the Anglicized version of Dorothea or Theodora, which means 'Gift of God.' I translated 'Dora' into 'Gift' leaving 'Theo' (from a sense of modesty which I am sure you will feel was not uncalled for) in the original Latin, and - voila tout! It served me well. It was short and simple and the public and my reviewers treated it so kindly, even from its first using, till illness laid it on the shelf, that I have grown to feel a tenderness for it.
Curtis Yorke (Mrs. S.C. Richmond Lee) - The principal reason I chose Curtis Yorke as a pen-name was that I did not want my work to be judged with the leniency frequently accorded to women's work twenty-one years ago, but that it should be reviewed either favorably or unfavorably on its merits.
George Paston (Miss E.M. Symonds) - Nearly every review of every novel and every play I have written has begun with some form of this question: 'Why do all women writers take the name of George?' It would be about as reasonable to ask: 'Why are all men writers born with the name of Benson?' As a matter of fact, I believe there are fewer women writers with the pseudonym of George than there are men writers with the family name of Benson. When I chose the name George Paston there was no other female George in the field except George Fleming, who had not come before the public for some time. As a Norfolk woman, I chose the name of Paston from the little village 'where the letters come from'. But, it may be asked, why does a woman prefer to write under a masculine name rather than under her own? The answer is to be found, partly in the desire for fair play, which a woman seldom gets from men, and partly from the dread of making a public failure. When I say that a woman seldom gets fair play I don't mean that she is necessarily treated more harshly on account of her sex; I mean that she is often treated with so-called chivalry - in other words, a contemptuous indulgence - on account of her sex. The notices of novels in the critical and monthly reviews frequently begin with some remarks as, 'This work is written by a lady; consequently not the object of severe criticism.'
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