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Pseudonyms are not uncommon among authors—we are lately celebrating the 100th anniversary of the passing of someone called Mark Twain, for instance—so the practice does go back a ways. An interesting piece in the Washington Post (via) talks about some famous aliases, as well as the phenomenon of authors hiding behind names we know they're hiding behind. 'The reasons for hiding behind fake names are as varied as the writers who do it. Satirists such as François-Marie Arouet and Eric Arthur Blair (better known as Voltaire and George Orwell) used pseudonyms as a shield from critics and irritable sectors of society. Charlotte Brontë sidestepped the soft misogyny of the male-dominated publishing industry by first submitting the novel "Jane Eyre" under the pen name Currer Bell.' More...