The female pioneers finally making a name for themselves

Susannah Goldsbrough on the writers whose male aliases are being cast aside for the first time

The Women’s Prize for Fiction is marking its 25th anniversary by republishing 25 books by female writers who used male pseudonyms. The works, collected under the banner “Reclaim Her Name”, range from short stories to novels, and sexually liberated romance to psychological horror; they date back to the early 19th century, but continue well into the 20th.

Using sources from both sides of the Atlantic, including the British Library, a team of researchers whittled down a list of over 3,000 writers to the final set.

With one major exception – George Eliot, whose novel Middlemarch will for the first time appear under her real name, Mary Ann Evans – not only the true identities of the authors but most of the works on the list may be unfamiliar to modern readers. It’s time to set the record straight; here are six of the best.

Indiana by Amantineaurore-lucile Dupin (aka George Sand, 1804-76)

Dupin is remembered as much for her bohemian personal life as for her writing – she counted Chopin among

Cover stars: the 25 female authors chosen by the Women’s Prize for Fiction her lovers – but hers was some of the most popular fiction of the early 19th century.

Flaubert and Balzac were avid admirers, and Proust alluded to her work in his own. Indiana (1832) was her first novel; it follows a young woman in search of freedom from an unhappy marriage.

A Phantom Lover by Violet Paget (aka Vernon Lee, 1856-1935)

Paget’s fiction can be frightening. Her 1886 novella A Phantom Lover is the psychologically tortuous tale of a housewife who falls in love with a ghost. Her work didn’t end with the supernatural; she was also an art critic and theorist, who lived in Italy for much of her life and helped bring the idea of “empathy” into English aesthetics. She was also painted by John Singer Sargent.

Twilight by Julia Frankau (aka Frank Danby, 1859-1916)

Frankau grew up in the affluent Jewish area of Maida Vale, and was educated by Laura Marx, daughter of Karl. Her first novel Doctor Phillips (1887), a social satire set in that world, was instantly popular. She went on to write several books about 18th-century art and a further 14 novels, the last of which was Twilight (1916). The plot concerns a woman on her deathbed who is inspired to write about another woman’s death.

Keynotes by Mary Bright (aka George Egerton, 1859-1945)

Despite being a nomad – she was born in Australia, went to school in Germany, eloped to Detroit and lived in Norway – Bright considered herself an Irish writer. Her 1893 short-story collection Keynotes, her first published work, explores relationships between women across class barriers. Illustrated by Aubrey Beardsley, it proved popular in both Britain and America. Bright was briefly famous enough to be lampooned in Punch.

Takekurabe by Natsu Higuchi (aka Ichiyō Higuchi, 1872-96)

When she died from tuberculosis at the age of just 24, Higuchi was already a celebrity, and her short stories have since left a footprint on Japanese literature. Her experiences living in poverty near Tokyo’s redlight district influenced Takekurabe [Growing Up], an 1895 novella that tackles the plight of women in 19thcentury Japan.

Marie of the Cabin Club by Ann Petry (aka Arnold Petrie, 1908-97)

Petry became the first black American woman whose work sold over a million copies with her 1946 novel The Street. Her literary sensibilities were formed after she came to New York from Connecticut, and saw the poverty and hardship that characterised life for so many black people.

The short story Marie of the Cabin Club, published in 1939 in the Baltimore Afro-american, was her first piece of fiction. It’s about a girl working at a jazz bar who stumbles into an espionage ring.