Some of the greatest works in English literature were first
published without their authors' names. Why did so many authors want to
be anonymous--and what was it like to read their books without knowing
for certain who had written them? In Anonymity, John Mullan
gives a fascinating and original history of hidden identity in English
literature. From the sixteenth century to today, he explores how the
disguises of writers were first used and eventually penetrated, how
anonymity teased readers and bamboozled critics--and how, when book
reviews were also anonymous, reviewers played tricks of their own in
return.
Today we have forgotten that the first readers of Gulliver's Travels and Sense and Sensibility
had to guess who their authors might be, and that writers like Sir
Walter Scott and Charlotte Brontë went to elaborate lengths to keep
secret their authorship of the best-selling books of their times. But,
in fact, anonymity is everywhere in English literature. Spenser, Donne,
Marvell, Defoe, Swift, Fanny Burney, Austen, Byron, Thackeray, Lewis
Carroll, Tennyson, George Eliot, Sylvia Plath, and Doris Lessing--all
hid their names. With great lucidity and wit, Anonymity tells
the stories of these and many other writers, providing a fast-paced,
entertaining, and informative tour through the history of English
literature.