George Orwell’s most famous novels are Animal Farm and 1984,but before he wrote those he penned Down and Out in Paris and London, a memoir of his time living in poverty. The man who was born David John Moore Cornwell published as John le Carré because MI6 officers are not allowed to publish under their own names. le Carré was working for MI6 in Hamburg, Germany when he wrote his first spy story, The Spy Who Came in From the Cold. John le Carré doesn’t just write about spies – he’s been one. James, she’s one of the romance genre’s most daring writers. In real life, Erika Leonard is rather shy – but as E.L. Watkins uses the pen name to speak out about feminism and race.Įrika Leonard started out by writing fan fiction online under the name “Snowqueens Icedragon.” When she wrote her first “real” novel, Fifty Shades of Grey, she adopted a more professional pen name. The truth didn’t come out until a Sunday Times columnist figured it out using linguistic analysis.īell hooks is one of the most important feminist writers in history, but her name isn’t really “bell hooks.” Gloria Jean Watkins adopted the name bell hooks to honor her great-grandmother, Bell Blair Hooks.

So for her next project, a suspense thriller, Rowling published under the name Robert Galbraith. That made writing The Casual Vacancy a more stressful experience than Rowling wanted.

Rowling’s success with the Harry Potter books brought her plenty of attention and plenty of pressure when it came time to undertake her next project. Things are a little better these days, though there are still problems – publishers still sometimes ask women authors to go by their initials to make their gender less obvious to readers. That unfortunate fact led Mary Ann Evans to write her masterful novels under a male pseudonym. In fact, being a woman used to be a serious handicap to getting your work published. Women have dominated literary awards in 2015, but it wasn’t always this way. Here are just ten such famous writers, along with their real names and stories.

History is full of great authors who wrote under assumed names, for all sorts of different reasons. Do you know the real names of these famous writers? He has that in common with the woman who wrote the massively popular Fifty Shades of Grey series. That guy who wrote The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is pretty famous, but a lot of people don’t know his real name.

Famous books names