Did you know George Orwell was a pseudonym?

Orwell’s real name was Eric Blair. I picked up this literary fact while hopscotch-reading through an anthology of essays.¹   

 Last week’s revelation about one of my favorite authors surprised me. It also piqued my curiosity. Why did Blair use a pen name?² 

I called my mother, who taught English for many years, to share the news while secretly hoping this was news to her too. Turns out she didn’t know, but nor was she surprised. I also learned she didn’t teach Orwell’s work.   

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A fiercely loved paperback of George Orwell’s 1984 has a permanent home in the handmade pine bookshelf closest to my bed. It’s hard for me to read because of its physical state, not mine. Tiny typeface on dog-eared yellow pages. Plus, it smells musty and old, unlike the other crisper, younger books keeping it company. I imagine this edition has been with me since my high school days.    

Rarely do I reread books. However, 1984 has been the exception. I have returned to this classic, first assigned in school. My sense is that high school teachers dissected the meaning of the author’s satirical work, rather than the author.  

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Perhaps geography plays a role too when teaching literature. As a proud Missourian, I know that Mark Twain was Samuel L. Clemens’ pen name. It’s knowledge that I suspect they teach in school, but I believe it’s buried in the soil, or that it floats down the Mississippi River. The Mississippi River, a virtual character, in Twain’s work.

How did Clemens pick his pen name? Clemens claimed that his nom de plume was inspired by river boatmen. The boatmen called out Mark Twain, shorthand for two fathoms, helping navigate their craft. My mother also confirmed this legend. However, I found another story explaining that Clemens earned the nickname from ordering his usual drink, Mark Twain, which meant two shots of whiskey.  

Pick your story. How about another one? Twain was born on the same day Hally’s Comet shone in the sky in 1835 and died, as he predicted, when the comet appeared again in 1910.  

“Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn’t,” as quoted by Twain’s own character Pudd’nhead Wilson.

As a writer, I plan to take more care to learn and remember authors’ names and their life stories beyond what’s on the page.

^{1            I was reading Orwell’s essay “Such, Such were the Joys,” in The Art of the Personal Essay An Anthology from the Classical Era to the Present.}   

^{2            Why did Eric Blair choose the name Orwell? Curious readers, I will write another blog on writers and their pen names.}