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"The Little-Known True Stories Behind the Men & Women who Shaped America" |
ATTENTION
EDITORS:
Here's the current RED, WHITE & TRUE MYSTERIES story for your
newspaper ...
Were Flora Fairfield and A.
M. Barnard
related to a famous writer?
Since March is Women’s History Month, all of the stories in this column this month will be about … anyone want to take a guess? Anyone?
That’s right – women.
This week’s column is about several women who used pen names as writers. A pen
name, by the way, is a fictitious name that a writer uses, such as when Samuel
Clemens used the pen name of Mark Twain.
Speaking of pen names, here
are a few others that were used by famous writers: Richard Saunders, Victor and
Ms. Silence Dogood. Was it possible that Richard Saunders was related to Ms.
Silence Dogood? The real identity of each writer will surprise you; you will
discover who they were at the end of the story.
Flora Fairfield was born in
1832 in Germantown,
Pennsylvania. Most of her education came from her father.
Among her friends was the writer Henry David Thoreau. She served as a nurse in Washington,
DC, during the Civil War. She began publishing
poems, short stories and juvenile stories in 1851.
A. M. Barnard was also born
in 1832 in Germantown, Pennsylvania. Like Flora Fairfield, most of her education
came from her father. Among her friends was the writer Ralph Waldo Emerson. In
1863 she wrote a book titled Hospital
Sketches that was based on her experiences as a nurse, and it was this
little-known book that kick-started her career as a serious writer.
Sometimes a writer has a pen
name which does not become well-known, and she might change her pen name to a
different name and become more successful with the new pen name. The pen name is
not usually what determines success, but changing a pen name allows a writer to
start over and re-brand herself when she changes the literary genre in which she
writes.
That’s what the writer
formerly known as Flora Fairfield did. So did A. M. Barnard. You see, both of
these names were pen names of … Louisa
May Alcott.
And in a case of art
imitating life, Louisa May Alcott’s character Jo is based on her own life in Little
Women. Her three real-life sisters represented Jo’s three sisters in the
story: Meg, Beth and Amy. And like Ms. Alcott, Jo’s character also wrote
stories anonymously.
So, which writers were known
by the pen names of Richard Saunders, Victor and Ms. Silence Dogood?
Richard Saunders was the pen
name of Ben Franklin when he wrote Poor
Richard’s Almanack.
Victor was the pen name used
by poet Percy Shelley, whose wife, Mary Shelley, created the story of
Frankenstein’s Monster. Percy had performed experiments with electricity,
similar to what scientist Victor Frankenstein did on his monster (many people
incorrectly assume that the monster was named Frankenstein, but in reality, the
fictional monster had no name).
And, finally, Ms. Silence
Dogood was the pen name of a middle-aged widow who wrote an advice column for
James Franklin’s newspaper in
It turns out that Silence Dogood wasn’t middle-aged after all. In fact, she wasn’t even a woman; she was a 16-year-old boy by the name of … Ben Franklin!
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# #
Paul
Niemann’s column has appeared in more than 110 newspapers. He can be reached
at niemann7@aol.com

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