Pen Names of Women Writers.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXX, Issue 41, 9 October 1902, Page 6

Pen Names of Women Writers.

Tm«R« is suoh a tantalising suggestion of mystery in many of Ike pen names whioh are so familiar to us (Bays a writer in an exohange) that one can not resist wondering how and why they win assumed .

Why, for example, should the late Charles Kingiley's talented daughter ohoose to be known as Lucas Malet t According to her own oonfession, her modesty was the motive whioh induced he* to oonceal her identity, «o that any failure on her part should not dim the lustre of her father's fame. For this reason the oombined the names of two clever women in her family, one of whom was Miss Mary Luoas, the maiden name of her father's mother, and the other Aiioe Malet, her grandfather's aunt, both of whioh nam«s she hat thus rescued from oblivion.

With lady writers the fear of family oritioiim seems to have been responsible for many assumed names. Mm Alexander, for instance, the author of 'The Wooing Of and other delightful novels, adopted the Christian name of her husband, Mr Alexander Hector, and under this mask won her fame before he was aware that she had written a line And Mme. Sarah Grand, knowing that her husband, Surgeon Mcb'all, did not approve of her riiwi, oonoealed her identity under the name now to widely known and whioh she chose on account of ita plainness. It is curious, by the way, how many lady authors have seleoted unattractive and even ugly pen names. Olive Sohreiner won htr laurels under the almost repellant name of Ralph Iron ; MrsCraigie chose to be known as John Oliver Hobbes, deliberately seleoting the least attractive Lame she could think of, so that it might nol be recognised as a woman's choice, and that it might warn het againßt any yielding to womanly sentimentality in her writing ; and for similar reasons Mrs Arthur Stannard presented herself to the public as John Strange Winter, as un/eminine a name as one could easily conceive.

It is curious, also, to obrerve how almost invariably the pen names of lady writers are either avowedly masculine or without indication of ccx, m George Eliot, Maxwell Grey and G. M. Hnttoa (Mrs Mona Caird).