Intimately connected with this change of name by authors is the case of authoresses who are married after they have commenced to write. Here the most convenient plan is to adopt the husband's name, except in those cases where the authoress elects to continue her maiden name. In this, as in many other cases, it is not advisable to go behind the writer's own statement in the title-page. If the author is consistent in using one name on all his or her works, there is no need to seek out a name which he or she does not use. The cataloguer's difficulty arises when different names are used at different periods of life; and, as his main duty is to bring all the works of an author under one heading, he must decide which of the different names he is to choose as a heading.
Mr. Cutter's rule is:—
"Married women, using the surname of the last husband, or if divorced, the name then assumed. Refer.
"I should be inclined to make an exception in the case of those wives who continue writing, and are known in literature, only under their maiden names (as Miss Freer, or Fanny Lewald), were we sure of dealing with them only as authors, but they may be subjects; we may have lives of them, for instance, which ought to be entered under their present names."
The Library Association rule is rather ambiguous:—
"29. Married women and other persons who have changed their names to be put under the name best known, with a cross-reference from the last authorized name."
The case of married women is carried by the British Museum rule respecting change of name which is quoted above, with the inconvenient result that Mrs. Centlivre, the playwright, who is only known by that name, appears in the British Museum Catalogue under the name Carroll.
Having dealt with some of the difficulties of modern names, we will pass on to consider some of the points connected with classical names. There is little difficulty connected with Greek authors, as they usually had but one name; but as a mixture of alphabets cannot be tolerated in the headings of catalogues, we must use the Latin form of these names, as Herodotus, not Ήρόδοτος. In this case, besides the inconvenience of different alphabets, we should have the author known to us all as Herodotus under the letter E, if we adopted the original form.