Why Authors Use Pen Names (And Why They Sometimes Regret It)
- David Salariya
- Sep 1, 2024
- 11 min read
Updated: Jul 22
Who Wrote That? The Slightly Complex World of Being Several Authors at Once
By David Salariya (also known as David Stewart, Max Marlborough, and the invisible hand behind Margo Channing’s sticker and early learning empire)
A Confession (Of Sorts)
Let me begin with a small confession.
I suffer from a mild, entirely manageable, and unexpectedly productive condition.
Multiple Author Syndrome.
This rare affliction tending to affect those of us with a fondness for strong whisky, a sturdy sketchbook, and an active imagination fuelled by a rotating cast of professional alter egos. The symptoms? You find your name - well, names - scattered across publishing databases like literary confetti.
One Writer, Many Hats
If you have ever typed David Stewart into a library catalogue and ended up knee-deep in ancient Egyptian burial rites, the sweat-soaked spectacles of Roman gladiators, or the final hours of the Titanic, Frankenstein's Secret Journal, that was me.
If you once stumbled across an art instruction book by Max Marlborough, perhaps exploring the bold stylings of manga or inviting you to draw the alphabet with a sense of flair, that was me too.
And if your child has triumphantly stuck 250 miniature flags onto furniture or a world map, cheered on by the glamorous cover-name Margo Channing (lifted straight from "All About Eve', then yes, I must admit - it was also me too...
Making a Career of Not Being Myself
You might say I’ve made something of a career out of not being entirely myself. And strangely, it has suited me.
Why? Because publishing is a strange world. One day you are producing a serious historical book for schools. The next, you are inventing a character who sings while vacuuming. Different audiences, different tones, different covers - each requiring a shift in voice, tone, and (occasionally) gender.
Sometimes publishers prefer it that way. A new name, a new look, a neat little division between series. It is not smoke and mirrors - it is costume and character. And I have always loved the idea of a motley crew of authors and artists producing different lkinds of books, and conversely loath the idea of labelling.
The Unseen Author
There is also a certain liberation in stepping to one side. Letting the work speak. Watching a book travel out into the world without fuss or explanation... It is not always about applause. Sometimes, it is about the quiet pleasure of knowing you pulled something off without being spotted.
Of course, the downside is occasionally being the ghost in your own catalogue of work. Books you worked on, created and designed slip into the world under a borrowed name, while your actual name dozes politely in the metadata. But then again, I was always more interested in the work and the readers.
So, Who Wrote That?
Chances are, if you enjoyed something strange, funny, educational, or drawn - something that whispered “try this” or “learn that” - then one of me probably had something to do with it.
And if you are a young writer, illustrator, or publisher wondering whether you are allowed to be many things at once, I have one simple answer.
Yes. You are. And in today’s world, you may need to be.
Ah, the Pen Name. The literary wig.
The author’s secret identity. The “I swear, that wasn’t me” escape hatch when a book flops spectacularly.
Writers have been hiding behind pseudonyms for centuries, for reasons ranging from pure survival (hello, 19th-century female authors trying to be taken seriously) to reinvention (hello, Stephen King pretending to be “Richard Bachman” just to see if people still liked him).
I should know - I’ve used several myself.
Would I do it again in today’s digital age? Hmm.
Let’s discuss
Why Bother With a Pen Name?
The short answer? Branding. The long answer? Confusion, secrecy, reinvention, tax evasion (just kidding, or am I?), and the occasional need to escape your own career.
Take one author - me for example...
My full name is David Stewart Salariya, but over the years, I’ve gone by: David Salariya (Classic. The default. Safe.) David Stewart (The middle-name-only phase - mysterious, no?) Max Marlborough (Sounds rakish, wears a velvet smoking jacket, drinks whisky, sitting in a leather armchair. Used it anyway named after Marlborough Place.) And let us not forget Margo Channing the sticker book embrionic Blue Peter presenter - the expert of the sticker book and early learning.
Each one served a purpose. Running The Salariya Book Company meant wearing multiple hats - concept creator, designer, art director, publisher, and, oh and yes, actual author.
So why do authors use pen names and sometimes live to regret It?
Pen names helped keep those roles from colliding like a disaster multi-car pile-up hitting a petrol tanker.
And I’m not alone. J.K. Rowling created Robert Galbraith to escape Harry Potter’s shadow (though let’s be honest, that shadow is the size of the moon). The Brontës became Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell because 19th-century publishers thought a woman writing books was as outrageous as a cow playing the violin. And Lewis Carroll? He just didn’t want his Oxford students bringing Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland into maths lectures and refused any mail addressed to Lewis Carroll, certainly regretting he'd ever written Alice.
When a Pen Name is More Than Just a Name
Sometimes, a pseudonym is about survival.
Molière (real name: Jean-Baptiste Poquelin) didn’t want to embarrass his family by becoming a playwright. George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans) had to disguise her gender to be taken seriously.Saki (H.H. Munro) wrote biting satire so he could dodge legal trouble.
And then there’s Daniel Defoe, who reportedly had 190+ pseudonyms - which either means he was incredibly prolific or in serious debt.
In this day and age, Elena Ferrante has gone all-in on anonymity, refusing to reveal her real name. Either she’s a genius or an extreme introvert who just wants to write in peace.
The Pen Name Problem in the Digital Age
Some writers use a pen name to escape their past selves - or at least their publishers' expectations.
Samuel Clemens became Mark Twain and never looked back. Isaac Asimov tried “Paul French” for some of his sci-fi (though let's be honest, Asimov is already a great name). Stephen King wrote as Richard Bachman to see if he could succeed without his famous name.
(Spoiler: He could.)
This reinvention trick is particularly useful if your first books tanked. Because nothing says “fresh start” like pretending you’re someone else entirely.
Anonymity and Privacy
Once upon a time, it was easy to have a secret identity. You wrote under a different name, your publisher covered for you, and readers were none the wiser.
Now? Good luck.
Social media means secrets don’t stay secret. One tweet and boom—your pen name is outed. Just ask Robert Galbraith. AI-generated content is flooding the market with pseudonymous junk. Readers are craving real, human authors more than ever. Publishers are moving toward authenticity. Readers want to know the person behind the book -especially in non-fiction, where credibility matters.
These days, if you’re using a pen name, you better be prepared to double down on the act—or watch it collapse under a well-placed Google search.
Would I Use a Pen Name Today?
Honestly? Probably not.
The advantages (privacy, reinvention, genre-hopping) aren’t as strong anymore. Marketing is easier when readers know who you are.
Publishers want transparency, not mystery. Children's non-fiction books need biographies so that the librarians, teachers and fledgling readers know that they can trust the books are well researched, authoritative and fact checked...and not written by the internee on a slack Thursday...be wary of non-fiction without biographies.
That being said… if you see a book pop up by James Buckminster III, don’t ask too many questions...or the indomitable Margo Channing.
The Man of a Thousand Names:
Charles Hamilton and the Empire of Frank Richards
When it comes to authors hiding behind masks, few were as industrious or as unapologetically prolific as Charles Harold St John Hamilton - or should I say Frank Richards, Martin Clifford, Owen Conquest, Harry Clifton, Talbot Wynyard, Hilda Richards, and a few dozen others, depending on the week and the publisher’s whim.
Born in 1876 in Ealing, Charles Hamilton (let’s stick with CH for brevity) holds the Guinness World Record for the most prolific writer of boys' fiction in history, having churned out over 5,000 full-length stories in his lifetime—many clocking in at 25,000 words or more. That’s a small library’s worth of text, much of it typed, mind you, with meticulous plotting and character arcs that spanned decades. He wasn’t just spinning yarns—he was building fictional institutions.
Why So Many Names?
The short answer? Copyright, contracts, and commercial strategy. CH worked mainly for the Amalgamated Press, which retained ownership of both the characters and the pen names. Writers were often seen as interchangeable parts in a literary factory. Pen names could be passed around, and Hamilton, obliging and endlessly inventive, adopted new ones like a quick-change artist backstage at the Palladium.
But there was another reason. By scattering his output across pseudonyms, he gave the illusion of a bustling editorial department, all staffed by rugged adventurers, eccentric schoolmasters, and gruff airmen - when, in fact, it was just one man in a bungalow hammering away at a typewriter.
The Greatest Hit: Frank Richards and Billy Bunter
Hamilton’s most famous creation - indeed, one of the most enduring characters in British boarding school fiction - was Billy Bunter, the 14 stone rotund, scheming, and oddly lovable anti-hero of The Magnet, which ran weekly from 1908 to 1940. Under the name Frank Richards, CH wrote an extraordinary run of stories set at Greyfriars School, building a rich, humorous world that blended slapstick with satire and class commentary (though critics often missed the latter).
When The Magnet closed during WWII, Bunter was briefly retired. But he made a triumphant post-war comeback in hardback, thanks to publisher Charles Skilton, who commissioned 38 Bunter novels. These were bestsellers in their day - a hugely comforting feast for a Britain recovering from rationing and bomb craters.
A Roll Call of Alter Egos
Here’s just a few of the many faces CH wore throughout his career:
Frank Richards - Greyfriars School, Billy Bunter
Martin Clifford - St Jim’s stories in The Gem
Owen Conquest - Rookwood School stories
Sir Alan Cobham - Daring aviation tales (not the real aviator, but close enough for newsagents)
Freeman Fox, Prosper Howard, Robert Stanley - Crime, detective, and action fiction
Hilda Richards - Likely used for romantic or girls’ stories
Clifford Owen, Raleigh Robbins, Robert Rogers - Spare identities for one-offs or cross-genre experimentation
It's telling that among these pseudonyms were names that sounded like minor aristocrats, explorers, or schoolmasters. This was branding, early-20th-century style.
Progressive Behind the Curtain
Despite operating in a genre now seen as fusty or jingoistic, Hamilton was more progressive than many give him credit for. He often included Jewish, Indian, and working-class characters in sympathetic roles, and delighted in puncturing the egos of pompous headmasters and entitled prefects. His stories championed the underdog and satirised the smug.
That said, CH himself was a shy figure - often self-deprecating, and not particularly revealing in his autobiography which was credited as "writing the least revealing biography ever published".
Una Hamilton Wright, biography of her much loved uncle Charlie "The Far Side Of Billy Bunter": The Biography of Charles Hamilton gives more background to this reclusive author from being arrested in Austria as a spy to the casino's of France, CH obviously had a life far beyond Greyfriars.
One More Thing...
Hamilton’s use of pen names wasn’t just an eccentricity - it was a necessity of the publishing machine he helped build. Writers weren’t always allowed to own their own work, and CH’s ability to produce to order (with voice, pacing, and plotting intact) made him indispensable.
In a time when AI can now imitate prose styles and ghostwriters abound, Hamilton’s masked multitudes feel strangely contemporary. He was a brand, a one-man publishing house, a shadow army of literary identities - and for generations of readers, the voice of their imagined schooldays.
Authors Using Pen Names
Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson) United Kingdom
George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans) United Kingdom
Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) United States
Dr. Seuss (Theodor Seuss Geisel) United States
J.K. Rowling (Robert Galbraith) United Kingdom
Voltaire (François-Marie Arouet) France
George Orwell (Eric Arthur Blair) United Kingdom
Pablo Neruda (Ricardo Eliécer Neftalí Reyes Basoalto) Chile
Stendhal (Marie-Henri Beyle) France
Isaac Asimov (Paul French) United States (used this pen name for some of his science fiction works)
Anne Rice (Howard Allen Frances O'Brien) United States
Lemony Snicket (Daniel Handler) United States
Ellis Bell, Acton Bell, Currer Bell (Emily Brontë, Anne Brontë, Charlotte Brontë) United Kingdom
Elena Ferrante (Real identity undisclosed) Italy
Fernando Pessoa (Multiple heteronyms) Portugal
Sidney Sheldon (Sidney Schechtel) United States
James Tiptree Jr. (Alice Bradley Sheldon) United States
Murasaki Shikibu (Real name unknown) Japan
Saki (H.H. Munro) United Kingdom
J.D. Robb (Nora Roberts) United States
Stephen King (as Richard Bachman): To test if his success was due to talent or branding.
Agatha Christie (as Mary Westmacott): For her romantic novels.
C.S. Lewis (as Clive Hamilton): For his poetry.
Louisa May Alcott (as A.M. Barnard): For her thrillers.
Artists Known by One Name
Michelangelo (Michelangelo Buonarroti) Italy
Raphael (Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino) Italy
Rembrandt (Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn) Netherlands
Titian (Tiziano Vecelli) Italy
El Greco (Domenikos Theotokopoulos) Greece/Spain
Banksy (Real identity undisclosed) England
Botticelli (Alessandro di Mariano di Vanni Filipepi) Italy
Kehinde Wiley United States (Though known by his full name, he is often referred to simply as "Kehinde" in discussions of his work)
Hokusai (Katsushika Hokusai) Japan
Warhol (Andy Warhol, though commonly referred to just by his last name) - United States
The advent of AI-generated content poses another challenge. Dubbed "AI slop," low-quality machine-generated content is flooding the internet, making human creativity more critical than ever. Readers increasingly value authentic, human-written narratives. For publishers, this underscores the importance of crediting real people behind the books they publish.
Final Thoughts: Pen Names Are Cool, But…
They let authors experiment without fear of judgment. They can separate careers or genres. They add a bit of literary mystery.
BUT—
In an AI-infested, social media-driven world, your identity will probably be uncovered in five minutes. Readers love authenticity. You might end up regretting not taking credit for your own work.
The bottom line? If you’re using a pen name today, it better be for a damn good reason.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to check if ‘Max Marlborough’ is available on Instagram.
Books by David Salariya
Written as David Stewart
You Wouldn't Want To… Series
Be an Egyptian Mummy
Sail on the Titanic!
Explore with Sir Francis Drake!
Be Tutankhamun!
Be a Roman Soldier!
How Would You Survive? Series
As a Bee
As a Polar Bear
As a Lion
As a Killer Whale
Your Guide to a New Life in Ancient Rome
WOE What on Earth Series
Sharks
Dinosaurs
Black & White Series
The Ocean
Pets
Written as Max Marlborough
Learning to Draw & Drawing to Learn (illustrated by Mark Bergin)
The Art of Drawing Manga Series
Girls and Boys
Action and Movement
Heroes and Villains
Drawing the Ancient Greeks
Drawing the Ancient Egyptians
Drawing the Vikings
Drawing the Ancient Romans
Written as David Salariya
Vikings and Their Travels
All About Me! A Baby’s Guide to Babies
I Am Small! A Baby’s Guide to What Babies Need to Know
On the Go! A Baby’s Guide to Getting on the Move
Tyrone the Clean-o-Saurus
What Lola Wants—Lola Gets
Pen names have long offered authors a way to navigate the complexities of identity, genre, and privacy. While they remain a valuable tool for some, the modern emphasis on authenticity is reshaping their role in the creative industry. As we continue to champion human creativity in an age of AI, highlighting the individuals behind the works we cherish feels more important than ever.
About the Author
David Salariya has been several people in his time, some of them entirely fictional. Born in Dundee, educated in illustration, and professionally raised by a wolf-pack of editors, publishers and printers, he has created and designed and published hundreds of books under a variety of guises, including David Stewart (the historical polymath), Max Marlborough (the art teacher named after a road in Brighton), and Margo Channing (the sticker-wielding grande dame of early learning, with just a hint of a terrifying Bette Davis.
Founder of The Salariya Book Company (est. 1989), David has spent four decades creating, designing, commissioning and occasionally ghosting his way through the children’s publishing world like a literary Zelig. His books have explained how to draw like a manga master, how to survive as a polar bear, and how not to be embalmed alive in Ancient Egypt.
He has written under his real name when he remembered to, and under pseudonyms when he needed plausible deniability. Some of his finest work has gone uncredited, unnoticed or out of print - just the way he likes it.
When not playing editorial dress-up, David enjoys dismantling publishing jargon, rescuing authors from obscurity, and writing blogs that are far more honest than he intends them to be.
He lives in Brighton, owns far too many fountain pens, and is still deciding who to be next.
Written by David Salariya. Unless it was one of the others.
“pen names,” “nom de plume,” “famous authors,” “writing identity,” “creative pseudonyms,” and “publishing industry.”
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