A Dictionary of Literary Pseudonyms in the English Language - Hardcover

T.J. Carty

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1884964133 ISBN 13: 9781884964138

Publisher: Fitzroy Dearborn Pub, 1997

Synopsis

This is a dictionary of the pseudonyms used by literary writers in English from the 17tth century to the present day.

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Reviews

A standard component of most card catalogs was the provision of cross-references between variant forms of an author's name. This useful feature not only assisted patrons who were interested in reading all books by a certain author, regardless of the name used on the title page, but also frequently enabled reference librarians to answer questions regarding pseudonyms more quickly than by consulting printed sources. Although today's online catalogs offer many advantages over card catalogs, many do not yet provide cross-references that link the various names under which an author has chosen to write. Thus, the need for accurate and up-to-date printed guides to pseudonyms is even more important than ever.

Compiled by a secondhand-book dealer in London, this dictionary identifies the real names behind approximately 12,000 pseudonyms used by about 7,500 English-language writers from the seventeenth century to the present. Therefore, it includes pen names for figures ranging chronologically from Daniel Defoe and Henry Fielding to Stephen King and Joyce Carol Oates. The dictionary is divided into two sections, the first of which lists pseudonyms and identifies the writer who used each name. The second section is arranged by the authors' original names. Each entry includes the person's dates and a brief phrase identifying the writer by nationality and genre, for example, "English romantic novelist." Pseudonyms used by the author are then listed alphabetically, with one or two representative titles provided in parentheses following each.

Although Carty makes several factual errors (the most glaring of which is the identification of Harriet Stratemeyer Adams, the American writer who penned most of the Nancy Drew books, as an "English science-fiction writer" ), the most disappointing aspect of this work is its incompleteness. Many authors who used pseudonyms (e.g., Ian Fleming, Louis L'Amour, Edgar Lee Masters, John Steinbeck) are not here at all, while the lists of pseudonyms for those who are included are often incomplete. For example, Carty identifies three pseudonyms for T. S. Eliot, twelve for Harlan Ellison, two for Ken Follet, and one for P. G. Wodehouse. Major 20th-Century Writers (Gale, 1991) lists six for Eliot, twenty-one for Ellison, four for Follet, and six for Wodehouse.

Comparisons of this work to other guides revealed that it is not as comprehensive as Pseudonyms and Nicknames Dictionary (3d ed., Gale, 1987) and Harold S. Sharp's Handbook of Pseudonyms and Personal Nicknames (Scarecrow, 1972; suppl., 1975; second suppl., 1982). Although this dictionary cannot stand alone as a reliable source of literary pseudonyms, it does include some unique entries. Therefore, large libraries will want to add it to complement the above mentioned sources.

Edition details

• Publisher: Fitzroy Dearborn Pub
• Publication date: 1997
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1884964133
• ISBN 13: 9781884964138
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 750