How Do We Judge Books Written Under Pseudonyms? This week, Francine Prose and Daniel Mendelsohn on what readers" and critics" reactions say about pseudonymous works. By Francine Prose J. K. Rowling has described using an alias as "liberating." In that case, I say more power to her. Francine Prose Over a lifetime that lasted from 1760 to 1849, the great Japanese painter Hokusai changed his name roughly 30 times. The final name he chose meant "the old man mad about art." I remember reading about this long before I imagined being a writer whose name would be known to anyone outside my family. And I remember thinking, Way to go! Who wouldn't want a new name, a clean slate, a chance to start over? In her entertaining and informative book, "Nom de Plume," Carmela Ciuraru considers the reasons writers (like the convicted embezzler William Sydney Porter, who became the more upstanding O. Henry, and Patricia Highsmith, who signed "The Price of Salt," her 1952 lesbian novel, as Claire Morgan) have camouflaged their identities. Advised by the poet Robert Southey that "literature cannot be the business of a woman's life, and it ought not to be," Charlotte Brontë took the sensible step of publishing, with her sisters Emily and Anne, a volume of poetry supposedly by Currer, Acton and Ellis Bell - three brothers more hormonally suited to making literature their business. It's depressingly easy to understand why women of past centuries, or any century, would - like the Georges, Sand and Eliot - write under a male name. If I take a pseudonym, it will be George, believe me. Pseudonyms are especially attractive to fiction writers, whose work (inventing people and seeing the world through their eyes) requires an impersonation, of sorts. Writing under a pen name is like doing an impersonation of someone doing an impersonation. I've fantasized about using an alias, but my fantasy mostly entails making a lot of money by writing a quick horror novel. A friend who did something like this says he needed his alter ego, not to conceal his real name but to "be" that fictitious person, who wrote a scene in which a father cannibalizes a family pet. Things are more complicated in this age of branding and consumer loyalty. It's one thing for a brilliant Japanese artist to change names every few years, but that won't work for the mayonnaise. Excuse me, where's the Hellmann's? Will readers buy a new book by their favorite author if the writer uses a different name? How will critics review a writer they already love or hate, and who is now pretending to be a first novelist? Booksellers who place orders based on an author's sales record will have to predict the potential of a "new" writer's work solely on the book's merits. Well-known writers have tested these waters, with mixed results. The very popular tend to do very well, especially when their fans learn the truth. Those with waning reputations, not so much. In the 1980s, Doris Lessing, whose science fiction had garnered unfriendly reviews, submitted a novel under the name Jane Somers, and her longtime British publisher turned it down. Later, some critics and readers greeted Somers's work even less warmly than they had received Lessing's earlier science fiction. Recently, there was the highly publicized pseudonym-success story involving "The Cuckoo's Calling," the crime thriller written by J. K. Rowling as Robert Galbraith. One could say Rowling was simply going deeper into disguise; Joanne Rowling had somehow gotten the idea that books by women were not as widely read or taken as seriously as books by men - or that boys shy from reading female authors - and so had chosen to be known by her gender-neutral initials. According to his "biography," Galbraith was a former plainclothes policeman working in the security industry. His novel got some good reviews but sold only modestly until his true identity was disclosed. Then the book became a best seller. Rowling has described impersonating Galbraith as "liberating." If that freedom enabled her to write a different sort of novel, I say more power to her. Because I'm the sort of reader who, when I discover a writer I like, will read all that person's work. In which case I don't care what name is on the cover of my new favorite writer's book. Francine Prose is the author of 20 works of fiction and nonfiction, among them the novel "Blue Angel," a National Book Award nominee, and the guide "Reading Like a Writer," a New York Times best seller. A new novel, "Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932" will be published next year. Currently a distinguished visiting writer at Bard College, she is the recipient of numerous grants and awards; a contributing editor at Harper's, Saveur and Bomb; a former president of the PEN American Center; and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. By Daniel Mendelsohn I wonder whether criticism untainted by knowledge of who the author is and what she has done is desirable or, indeed, valid. Daniel Mendelsohn The joke, apparently, was on us: on you the reader, on us the critics.