“I am always uncertain whether or not I see a real or an assumed signature”: David Lyndsay, Mary Diana Dods and Walter Sholto Douglas 

David Lyndsay was the pseudonym of the author born Mary Diana Dods, and who from 1827 lived as Walter Sholto Douglas.   Details about their life are patchy. It was the researcher Betty T. Bennett, editor of Mary Shelley’s letters who first made the connection between Dods, Lyndsay and Douglas in the 1980s. Bennett’s research at […]

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“Christine Strathern imbues this romantic story with all her own abiding love for her native Scotland”  

The Scottish author Nancy Brysson Morrison (1903-1986) is chiefly remembered today for her novel ‘The Gowk Storm’ a story about three daughters of a Scottish church minister. First published in 1933, the book was reissued as part of the Canongate Classics series in 1988. Morrison’s first two books were published by John Murray and the […]

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“Out of obscurity I came – to obscurity I can easily return”: Charlotte Brontë, Currer Bell and Jane Eyre

The use of pseudonyms by the Brontë sisters is perhaps one of the best known examples of the use of pen names in English literature. This post focusses on Charlotte Brontë (1816-1855), whose novel ‘Jane Eyre’ was published 175 years ago in October 1847. It was Charlotte who persuaded her sisters to submit their writing […]

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