This treatment of women authors may be summed up by repeating the recommendation "use the best-known name in all cases"—if the lady writes under her maiden name and is mostly known thereby, that is the name to use; if by her married name, then use that.
If she has been married more than once and written under all forms of her name (of which examples are A. Mary F. Robinson, who was Madame Duclaux and then Madame Darmesteter, and Mrs. Aubrey Le Blond, née Whitshed, formerly Mrs. Fred. Burnaby and Mrs. Main) then, again, the best-known (in these cases Robinson and Le Blond) are the right ones to use, not neglecting the references from the others. If a writer has consistently used a pseudonym, that, again, is the best to adopt for the entry. For example, there is a Spanish novelist, known as "Fernan Caballero," who, surviving three husbands, resumed her maiden name. In her case it is not worth while searching for or discussing which of her names should be chosen, that by which she is universally known being undoubtedly the best.
Books published anonymously—that is where the authors' names are not upon the title-pages, and no clue to them is to be found in the books—are more annoying to the cataloguer than pseudonymous works. At times a preface or a dedication in a book may bear the author's name or initials, or there may be something serving to reveal his identity in the text, and such evidence must be searched for. In the event of the book itself yielding no help, then the customary sources of information are turned to, the best for British cataloguers being Halkett and Laing's Dictionary of the Anonymous and Pseudonymous Literature of Great Britain (though this is not absolutely reliable). The British Museum, London Library, or other important catalogues at command should be consulted, particularly the catalogues of the place from which the book comes, as the wanted information may be known locally. For French books Barbier's Dictionnaire des ouvrages anonymes is useful.
The method of cataloguing an anonymous book may be shown here. The title-page of that chosen reads
The failure of Lord Curzon: a study in "imperialism": an open letter to the Earl of Rosebery, by "Twenty-eight years in India." 1903
The preface opens with a statement that the writer has adopted anonymity though quite aware that it is the thinnest of screens if there is any wish to pierce behind it, and he goes on to say that a twenty-eight years' acquaintance with India, etc., suggests some knowledge of the matter he discusses, thus showing that "Twenty-eight years in India" is not the title of another book, but a species of pseudonym. If this "thinnest of screens" cannot be penetrated, and the mere suggestion that it can should serve to put the cataloguer on his mettle, then there are two ways of entering the book regarding it as strictly anonymous. One is to enter uniformly by the first word of the title not an article as
Failure, The, of Lord Curzon: a study in "imperialism,"
by "Twenty-eight years in
India." 1903
The better way to enter anonymous books when concerned with particular persons or places is under the names of such persons or places, provided they are named on the title-pages, as
Curzon of Kedleston, Lord. The failure of
Lord Curzon: a study in "imperialism," by
"Twenty-eight years in India." 1903