Anonymous Authorship

[Arthur Thornton]

Intrigued by a radio show that I heard recently about this topic, I was wondering if anyone had read anything by 'Anonymous' that they would particularly recommend? In recommending a book, it would also be interesting to know why you think they decided to remain anonymous. I guess that they must have something interesting to say if they don't want anyone to know who they are - hence my desire to take a look at such books.

[Scheherazade]

Maybe they were worried that their work wouldn't be taken nicely.

Welcome to the Forum! :)

[Joreads]

A book called the Bride Stripped bare. As the title suggests you wouldn't want your parents reading this book and knowing it was you.

[superunknown]

El Lazarillo de Tormes. Severly criticized the church (or at least the priesthood) in mid-16th century Spain... not a good idea if you want to keep your head. Needless to say whoever wrote it didn't want his name attached to it. It's a classic piece of Spanish literature and the first real picaresque novel.

[mortalterror]

Good call, I love Lazarillo De Tormes.

I believe that Virginia Woolf once suggested that throughout history many of the anonymous have been women, either because it wasn't ladylike to write, or because of the possible reception, etc.

[kiki1982]

During the middle ages a lot of authors were anonymous, as it was not important who wrote, but what was written. Historians were able to find out the names of certain writers because they were paid and were in the books of castles etc., because they were supposed to 'proove' that king so and so was a decendant of King Arthur, Charles the Great, the Trojan heroes or so. The art of writing in itself was not important, but rather what 'info' was in it. And it was all true (:rolleyes:)
And anyway, in another way, writers still write anonymously now, as they use pseudonyms... Then again they show their face on tv, but not their real names.

Beowulf is another of such anonymous works
Reynaert the fox is a work in middle dutch, that has an author, by the name of 'William who made Madoc' (:rolleyes:), Madoc is lost. They don't know who it was for, what was in it etc. So essentially, he is also anonymous, but he was the first to put his name in the first verses of a book (in dutch that is)...
there are a lot of them on wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_literature