George Eliot, the author of Middlemarch, was the pen name of which writer?
- A.Jane Austen
- B.Mary Ann Evans
- C.Emily Bronte
- D.Virginia Woolf
Correct answer
Explanation
The correct answer is B, Mary Ann Evans. She took a man's name so that her novels would be judged as serious literature rather than as light romances by a woman, and she wrote Middlemarch, Silas Marner, Adam Bede and The Mill on the Floss under it. A is wrong because Jane Austen published her novels anonymously, as by a Lady, rather than under a male pen name. C is wrong because Emily Bronte wrote Wuthering Heights as Ellis Bell; her sisters Charlotte and Anne used Currer Bell and Acton Bell, so the sisters are the classic example of the practice but not the answer here. D is wrong because Virginia Woolf wrote under her own name. The nineteenth-century habit of women writing as men is the reason this question is set so often.
Read the full article: Pen Names of Famous Writers: Real Names and Takhallus
Practice Questions
View allPremchand was the pen name of which writer?
- A.Dhanpat Rai Srivastava
- B.Suryakant Tripathi
- C.Ramdhari Singh
- D.Ayodhya Singh Upadhyay
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He wrote first in Urdu as Nawab Rai, and after the colonial administration seized his collection Soz-e-Watan he adopted the name Premchand, under which he wrote Godan, Nirmala, Gaban, Rangbhoomi and the story Kafan.
Read the full explanation →Nirala was the pen name of:
- A.Sumitranandan Pant
- B.Suryakant Tripathi
- C.Mahadevi Verma
- D.Jaishankar Prasad
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He is always written as Suryakant Tripathi Nirala, the pen name meaning the unique or the unlike-any-other, and he wrote Saroj Smriti, Ram ki Shakti Puja and the poem Bhikshuk.
Read the full explanation →Mark Twain, the author of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, was the pen name of:
- A.Samuel Langhorne Clemens
- B.William Sydney Porter
- C.Eric Arthur Blair
- D.Charles Lutwidge Dodgson
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He took the name from the call of a Mississippi riverboat crew, where mark twain meant a sounding of two fathoms, that is water deep enough to be safe.
Read the full explanation →Which pen name was used by Mirza Asadullah Baig Khan?
- A.Ghalib
- B.Firaq
- C.Josh
- D.Majrooh
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Mirza Asadullah Baig Khan first wrote under the takhallus Asad and later chose Ghalib, which means dominant or victorious, and he names himself in the closing couplet of many ghazals.
Read the full explanation →The pen name used by Rabindranath Tagore for the poems of Bhanusimha Thakurer Padavali was:
- A.Gurudev
- B.Bhanusimha
- C.Kabiguru
- D.Thakur
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As a boy Tagore wrote poems in an archaic Vaishnava style and presented them as the work of a poet named Bhanusimha, and the collection is therefore called Bhanusimha Thakurer Padavali.
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