Depending where you look, pseudonyms and nom de plumes are synonymous…or not. If you want to be pedantic then nom de plume is obviously a name for writing whilst a pseudonym would be simply a name to hide your identity. However, most websites seem to use them interchangeably.
This subject came to my mind because I have just read ‘Cuckoo’s Calling’ by Robert Galbraith aka JK Rowling. She was already involved in hidden identities as her publisher had encouraged her to use her initials for the Harry Potter books, apparently as appearing to be male might sell more books. Maybe this sort of thing is in the past. I don’t think Katherine Rundell was encouraged to lose her feminine name. The Strike books, of which ‘Cuckoo’s Calling’ is the first, were published under the author name of Robert Galbraith and because the book is seriously good, it attracted the attention of various reviewers, who then found that they could find out no information about the writer, the publishers being strangely coy. This then added to the mystery and it was in fact the writer and Sunday Times columnist India Knight who recognised the style of writing and revealed the author. I suspect she was very pleased with herself…and understandably so.
Elena Ferrante, Italian author of ‘My Brilliant Friend’ and more, has taken this ploy further. She (or maybe he, but I don’t think so) declared she wanted to keep her privacy and years later, despite the efforts of journalists, she has not been unmasked. Does it really matter? I don’t think so. The story is the thing but inevitably a literary mystery is appealing to many.
Centuries ago women were the ones for whom it was not the done thing to write commercial novels. Think of Mary Ann Evans using the nom de plume George Eliot and the Brontes becoming Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell, just about being allowed to hold onto their initials.
In the twentieth century, the author Joanna Trollope, she of the so called ‘aga sagas’ (I loved them at the time) also wrote historical fiction under the name of Caroline Harvey. I suppose it can be helpful to separate genres and ensure your reader is not going to be confused as to what they are buying.
John Le Carre was the pen name of David Cornwall. His reasons were slightly different though. Several of his spy novels were published while he was still working at the Foreign Office and staff were forbidden to publish under their own names.
All interesting I find but as I said, the story is the thing.