“I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman,” wrote Virginia Woolf in A Room of One’s Own. And she was probably right: we know that, historically, women have been less likely to publish works in their own name, some, like George Eliot and Vernon Lee (whose given names were Mary Ann Evans and Violet Paget) using male pseudonyms.
Obviously it’s sad when writers feel forced into publishing their work secretly. But for many, both past and present, being able to write anonymously is exactly what they want. And sometimes, as in the case of the famously anonymous Italian author Elena Ferrante, the mystery surrounding the author’s identity becomes part of the hype around their work.
You might think that an author who isn’t willing to share their real identity online would be unpopular with young fans on social media, where influencers lay their whole lives bare. But in fact the opposite is true. Fans of the bestselling author of The Housemaid, Freida McFadden, don’t seem to care about what the author’s real name is – they just want her to keep churning out thrillers with shocking twists.
McFadden, whose famous fans include both Victoria and David Beckham, is less anonymous than some. She has made photos of herself publicly available – although some fans have theorised that her hair in these pictures is a wig and that her glasses are fake. However, her real name has never been revealed because, as well as writing, the 44-year-old author works as a doctor in Massachusetts, and she would like to continue doing that job without her patients or colleagues knowing about the success of her books.
McFadden isn’t the only anonymous author storming the bestsellers charts – British author of the popular college romance Icebreaker, Hannah Grace, has kept her identity completely hidden. Like McFadden, she started writing as a hobby, initially self-publishing before getting picked up by a traditional publisher. We know she’s in her early 30s, and was until recently living in Manchester, but not much else – the author doesn’t want the success of her books to mean that her life can no longer be private.
Whenever Grace gets media attention, the focus is on her identity: “Who Is Hannah Grace? And Why Won’t She Show Her Face?” was the headline of a New York Times article in 2023. But, interestingly, Grace’s legions of fans don’t seem to be asking the same questions – right now they are far more annoyed about the fact that Daydream, the third instalment in the novelist’s Maple Hills series, has fewer “spicy” (BookTok slang for sexy) scenes that the first two books.
Other authors, such as Uketsu, have made anonymity part of their brand – the bestselling Japanese author’s white papier-mache mask and black bodysuit have become part of his appeal. His ability to create visual drama was what got him into writing novels: it was his surreal videos on YouTube of asparagus that turns into fingers and strips of meat pegged out on a washing line that first gained him fans, and his debut mystery story was posted as a video.
Like Grace and McFadden, Uketsu wants his fans to focus on his work, not his identity. “I have thought about maybe sneaking a giant fake eye under the mask and then taking it off to reveal that I’ve been a terrible Cyclopean monster the whole time,” he joked in his interview with the Guardian this week.
With his books making up three of Japan’s Top 10 fiction bestsellers last year, and an English translation of his novel Strange Pictures now out in the UK and the US, his privacy doesn’t seem to have cost him any sales.
Photograph: Elise Amendola/AP
