Anonymity and pseudonymity

Anonymous authorship can be defined as encompassing any publication that appears without the author’s name printed either on the title page or in any other paratext such as a preface or dedication. Pseudonymous authorship, it follows, is a form of anonymity; the author’s name is concealed, while a false name is presented to the public. Anonymity, in this definition, is constituted formally by the absence of a name, or the presence of a false name, in the medium of publication. Friends, family, colleagues, editors, and publishers, naturally, are frequently aware of the identity of an anonymous author (but they are also frequently kept in the dark). The anonymity of a publication, as I define it, is not affected by whether a few people are in on the secret, or whether the identity of the author is in fact an open secret to many. For example, consider a first edition that has been published anonymously while the second edition has been signed; the author is now known, but the first edition continues to be an anonymous publication.