Cross-gender Pseudonyms

Question: “Rrose Sélavy” was a stylish alter ego and sometime pseudonym for which important 20th-century artist and chess player known for his readymade Fountain and Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2?

Answer: Man Ray photographed Duchamp in drag as Rrose Sélavy many times.

Question: The “Bell” “brothers” wrote their books in the parish of Haworth, Yorkshire, England. Who were they?

Answer: The Brontë sisters published under the male noms de plume of "Currer," "Ellis," and "Acton Bell," respectively.

Question: A woman writer who adopted the given name of “George” in her masculine nom de plume had an affair with composer and pianist Frédéric Chopin. Which George was it?

Answer: Amantine-Aurore-Lucile Dudevant, who published as “George Sand,” also counted the writers Prosper Mérimée and Alfred de Musset among her lovers.

Question: What is the actual name of science fiction writer “James Tiptree, Jr.”?

Answer: She also published under the name “Raccoona Sheldon.” Her actual identity was a well-kept secret until her mother’s obituary gave an essential clue to it.

Question: One of the Founding Fathers of the United States adopted the nom de plume “Silence Dogood” at age 16 in a letter to the editor of The New-England Courant. Who was he?

Answer: Some of his other pseudonyms were “Polly Baker” and “Alice Addertongue.”

Question: What Nobel Prize-winning woman writer used the pseudonym “John Sedges”?

Answer: She published five novels under that male pseudonym.

Question: What English essayist and novelist published her works as “Vernon Lee”?

Answer: She initially adopted the masculine nom de plume so that she would be taken seriously, but she soon came to be known by that name both personally and professionally.

Question: Which Australian woman writer occasionally published under the name “Brent of Bin Bin”?

Answer: Charmingly, she also published as “Mrs. Ogniblat L’Artsau.”

Question: This aristocratic Danish “fellow,” who owned a coffee plantation in Kenya, published under three male pseudonyms. Which was the best known?

Answer: “Isak Dinesen” was the best-known pseudonym of Karen Christence Dinesen, Baroness Blixen-Finecke. She also published under the names “Peter Lawless” and “Pierre Andrézel.”

Question: Which British poet contributed to a volume of “posthumous fragments” purporting to have been written by “Margaret Nicholson”?

Answer: He and a college friend, Thomas Jefferson Hogg, created and published the pamphlet while they were students at University College, Oxford.