Why Author Use Fake Names

For over a century, authors have been using fake names on their books, stories, poems, and other pieces of literature. But why is that? Why don’t authors want to use their own name for such great works of art? They’re many reasons why authors choose to use fake names. Some authors want to hide who they really are to avoid bringing shame to them and their family. Other popular authors want to hide themselves because they have gotten too popular. Sometimes, especially in the past, women use pen names to avoid prejudice against them. In the past, women were not usually educated. So it comes as no surprise that not many of them wrote books. It was not seen as acceptable for women to write books in the past. This is proved by “Letter from Robert Southey to Charlotte Brontë” that was written by Robert Southey as a response to Charlotte Brontë asking him his opinion on her poetry. In his response, Southey criticized Brontë for writing, and said that literature cannot be in a woman's life, and it shouldn't be in a woman's life. According to “Introducing Jane Eyre: An Unlikely Victorian Heroine” by National Endowment for the Humanities, victorian women were very limited in what they could do. They were strongly discouraged from writing, as it was seen as improper. This is why Charlotte Brontë chose to use the pen name Currer
According to Bennet, Eric Blair used the name George Orwell when writing his classic books, like Animal Farm, to avoid bringing shame to his family. C.S. Lewis, an Oxford professor, used the name Clive Hamilton to publish his poems because he didn’t want to jeopardise his job. As stated previously, women in the past were thought of as shameful when they wrote books. Robert Southey believed that women should not have a place in writing literature. Because of this, women of the past used pen names to avoid being