Due for publication 27th March 2025

 Noms de plume, aliases, pseudonyms; anonymous pen names that writers publish under. This book traverses the history of pen names as well as the various motivations behind using literary aliases.

Explore how they can be employed to fit in with social convention, to defy it, or to carve out a new literary identity. Through forty novelists, poets and playwrights, examine the motivations behind the invention of George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans), Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson) and the like.

The book also explores the wide range of motivations for taking on new names, including gender, the use of noms de plume for different genres, or even when writing as a team. Collectively, the stories in this book give us unusual insights into authors, publishers and readers over the last 200 years.

Kirsty McHugh and Ian Scott are curators at the National Library of Scotland.

• Hardback
• 160 pages, 184 x 118mm
• ISBN 9781851246496
• Publication March 2025