Carmela Ciuraru's six favorite pseudonymous books

Carmela Ciuraru is the author of Nom de Plume: A Secret History of Pseudonyms.

Carmela Ciuraru is not a pseudonym. Her anthologies include First Loves: Poets Introduce the Essential Poems That Captivated and Inspired Them (Scribner) and Solitude Poems (Alfred A. Knopf/Everyman’s Library). A graduate of Columbia University’s Journalism School, she is a member of the National Book Critics Circle and PEN American Center. She has written for the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Boston Globe, the Wall Street Journal, The Huffington Post, The Daily Beast, O, The Oprah Magazine, and other publications.

She is a 2011 Fellow in Nonfiction from the New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA).

For The Week magazine, Ciuraru named her favorite pseudonymous books, including:

Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell

Orwell’s literary debut, chronicling the lives of the working poor, is considered a masterpiece of reportage. But it was initially rejected by two publishers, and the author (whose real name was Eric Blair) admitted that he was not proud of it. Thus the persona "George Orwell" was born.

Read about the other books on the list.

See Carmela Ciuraru's list of ten great books by pseudonymous authors.

--Marshal Zeringue