Famous Authors with Secret Names

When you read a book, how often do you assume the author's name is their real name? Probably pretty often, right? But believe it or not, many writers in the publishing world prefer to write under a pen name—even some of the most famous ones. Can you guess who? From Stephen King to Maya Angelou, here are five authors you didn't know wrote under a pseudonym.

Bruno Guerrero on Unsplash

1. Stephen King

Dubbed the King of Horror, if you've never branched out beyond the classics of It and The Shining, then you probably wouldn't realize that Stephen King writes under several pen names. One of which is Richard Bachman, one he chose that wouldn't mix with the "King" brand.

Kevin Payravi on Wikimedia

2. J.K. Rowling

Author of the well-recognized (and well-loved) Harry Potter series, J.K. Rowling is another pen name you may or may not have known about. Well, technically, it's more of a shortening of her real name than a completely different name, but Joanne Rowling also publishes books under Robert Galbraith.

Daniel Ogren on Wikimedia

3. George Orwell

Yup, the person behind Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four wasn't someone named George Orwell, but actually someone named Eric Arthur Blair. The reason he had to write under a pseudonym was because he didn't want to associate his real name with his initial novels, believing that they would become failures.

Cassowary Colorizations on Wikimedia

4. Maya Angelou

Believe it or not, one of the greatest American poets of all time wasn't actually a person named Maya Angelou, but a person named Marguerite Annie Johnson. It was a portmanteau she had come up with in the 1950s by combining her childhood nickname with her then-husband's surname.

Unknown author on Wikimedia

5. Sophie Kinsella

If you know the Shopaholic series, you definitely know Sophie Kinsella. But as you've probably guessed, this isn't her real name—she was actually born Madeleine Sophie Wickham instead. While she did first start publishing under her real name, Wickham decided to change to Sophie Kinsella once she began writing the Shopaholic series, as she felt it was a new voice and a new style.

Elena Torre from Viareggio, Italia on Wikimedia