Did you know George Orwell was a pseudonym?

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

This revelation about one of my favorite authors surprised me. I called my mother, who taught English for many years, to share the news while secretly hoping she didn’t it would be news to her. Mom didn’t know but noted it’s a common practice for authors to protect their privacy.    

Why did Blair use a pen name? Well, literary scholars have plenty of theories. A prominent one suggests that Blair didn’t want to embarrass his parents by publishing Down and Out in Paris and London (1933) under his own name. His nonfiction work is a portrayal of poverty based on working menial jobs in kitchens in Paris and living on the streets in England. An experiment to experience first-hand what poverty tasted like and felt like.

It reminds me of Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America (2001) by Barbara Ehrenreich. Ehrenreich worked undercover as a waitress, maid, and a chain retail store, to see if she could survive on minimum wage. Her work helped readers understand that living on minimum wage is not living but struggling.   

Back to Orwell, perhaps he chose the name in honor of a racehorse that had a reputation for losing races even though the odds were in its favor. “Naming himself after a loser with a disability might well have appealed to the writer’s dark sense of humour,” says Ronald Binns, author of Orwell in Southwold.

Or another guess: He wanted an English-sounding name.  

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A fiercely loved paperback of Orwell’s 1984 has a permanent home on 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, in this case. (2)

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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.

Footnotes:

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   Inside this book was George Orwell’s biography, which noted it was the pen name of Englishman Eric Blair, born in Bengal in 1903. I’m a better reader now, never skipping over introductions or avoiding afterwords.