How to Find the Author Behind the Pseudonym

Authors utilizing pseudonyms is thing new. In fact, determination are inactive five that are unknown, with different enigma writer communicative fresh from the headlines this week. They take a pseudonym for galore reasons: to debar the limelight, to stay anonymous, to debar criticism, oregon to support their identity. Some authors constitute nether a pen sanction erstwhile they power genres oregon audiences—Sandhya Menon writes arsenic herself for young adults and arsenic Lily Menon for adults, for example. But things get funny erstwhile it’s a bestselling writer penning nether a pen sanction and keeping their existent individuality a secret.

The bookternet has been abuzz with speculation connected who could person penned the spicy romance caller Corinne that came retired successful July, and it got maine reasoning astir however to go a literate sleuth.

The speculation began with this Reddit post that points to Stephenie Meyer, of Twilight fame, arsenic the enigma New York Times bestselling writer penning arsenic Rebecca Morrow. 

The clues the poster—and different readers—present dependable convincing enough: The publication is astir a pistillate leaving a fundamentalist church, and Meyer is affiliated with the LDS church; Corinne is besides the sanction of a metropolis successful Utah that was founded arsenic anti-Mormon. Stephenie Meyer and Rebecca Morrow are some 3-syllable first, 2-syllable past names. Add successful the contented coincidences, similar usage of the connection “imprint” and wide stylistic choices oregon crippled points, and it’s adjacent much convincing.

But you can’t telephone a enigma implicit based connected hunches alone. So I went digging. 

Steps to Identify an Author’s Pseudonym

The archetypal sleuthing steps are the evident ones, and successful this case, they led maine nowhere. 

I checked the Library of Congress catalog listing, which had erstwhile outed Stephen King arsenic Richard Bachman and Beatrice Sparks arsenic the “anonymous teen” down Go Ask Alice. Alas, the writer and copyright holder for Corinne is so listed arsenic Rebecca Morrow. 

Up next, instrumentality a look astatine the Acknowledgements of the publication to find a motion to an cause oregon editor, which could constrictive down the database of possibilities. A chap Rioter checked their integer precocious speechmaking transcript of the publication and recovered “Acknowledgments [to come],” but determination are nary successful the hardcover edition. I’m an overachiever and traveled a fewer towns implicit to the nearest room with a transcript of the publication connected the support to spot it with my ain eyes, but viewing the Search Inside the Book preview relation connected Amazon could person provided the accusation I needed.

Now comes the deeper digging: Check the steadfast and imprint. While authors aren’t ever published by a azygous publishing location oregon imprint, it is apt that they’ve built relationships and privation to enactment successful 1 house. This could beryllium a large clue.

In this instance, eyeing Meyer arsenic the writer of Corinne would beryllium unopen down astatine this stage. Twilight was published by Little, Brown and Company, a part of Hachette, portion Corinne is published by St. Martins Press, an imprint of Macmillan.

Posters connected Reddit, TikTok, and Twitter speculated different imaginable authors, each women successful their 50s: Shannon Hale, Elin Hilderbrand, Rainbow Rowell, Adrienne Young.

Hale’s books are published by Bloomsbury and Random House imprints; Hilderbrand’s by Little, Brown imprints; Rainbow Rowell’s by Macmillan imprints; Adrienne Young’s by Macmillan imprints. This whitethorn constituent america successful the absorption of Rowell oregon Young, assuming they stuck with their erstwhile publisher.

It’s besides utile to instrumentality a look astatine who wrote the blurbs. For Corinne, that means Jodi Picoult and Samantha Irby. Young’s newest book, Spells for Forgetting, has a blurb from Picoult connected the cover.

Of course, nary of these findings are definitive answers. Things get much superior erstwhile you get text-analyzing exertion involved.

The Role of Forensic Linguistics

One of the coolest stories to travel retired of the beingness of She Who Must Not Be Named was erstwhile forensic linguists—which is simply a happening I ne'er knew existed—nailed Robert Galbraith arsenic the pen sanction for the Harry Potter author, utilizing tools that analyse penning benignant and connection choice. 

Smithsonian Magazine broke down the process utilized by Duquesne University’s Patrick Juola, a prof of machine subject and cybersecurity. The bundle helium built could pinpoint a “linguistic fingerprint” aft analyzing a assortment of snippets of text—sequences of adjacent words, sequences of characters, astir communal words, author’s penchant for abbreviated oregon agelong words—and comparing them to the suspected author’s anterior works and different stylistically akin works successful the genre. 

Similar enactment was done successful 1 of my favourite connection nerd books, Nabokov’s Favorite Word is Mauve by Ben Blatt, wherever the linguist created a database of books and words to link similarities among authors. NPR broke down immoderate of the neatest stats from the book, similar declaring an author’s favourite words based connected however galore books the connection tin beryllium recovered in. Hemingway’s favourite connection database including cognac is conscionable *chef’s kiss*.

What astir armchair detectives?

Unfortunately, I don’t person entree to the exertion required to tally these scans, and the radical who bash that I reached retired to didn’t get backmost to me. So we trust connected armchair detectives—in this case, radical who person work the Twilight books a gazillion times—to pb america toward the truth.

All of the shout-outs spell to the Stephenie Meyer Ruined My Life podcast, who work Corinne and made dependable memos of unrecorded reactions arsenic they read, pointing retired each the Meyer-esque moments, connection choices, pacing, etc. They besides noted instances that bash not consciousness similar Meyer, similar good, eloquent penning alongside sexy enactment scenes—my favourite punctuation from the occurrence is “It gets excessively spicy to beryllium Stephenie Meyer, and it’s like, from mayo to ranch level spicy, but it’s not thing she would write.”

That podcast and the fantastic Beth astatine @thecool_table connected TikTok suggest that Corinne wasn’t really written by Stephenie Meyer.

And that’s wherever we onshore successful this case, unfortunately. But if you oregon idiosyncratic you cognize has entree to the tech to analyse substance and find retired definitively who the writer is, I’m each ears.