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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 Boston in 1722. The writer used a pen name to hide “her” identity because she knew that her brother would not allow her to work at the paper.

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

© Paul Niemann 2010 

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