House name
A house name was a pseudonym owned by a PulpPublishers pulp magazine publisher, rather than a single author. Whereas fictitious names such as BrandMax Max Brand were used by one author, in this case FaustFrederick Frederick Faust, house names such as GrantMaxwell Maxwell Grant could be used by a variety of authors.
Pulp publishers chose to use house names to create the illusion that a series of stories had been written by one person, rather than a stable of authors. For instance, RobesonKenneth Kenneth Robeson was created by StreetandSmith Street and Smith for use on its DocSavage Doc Savage series. DentLester Lester Dent was contracted to write the series, but just in case he was unable to fulfill the job, Street asked DonovanLaurence Laurence Donovan to write several stories that were held as backup. Street also used the Robeson name when it started AvengerThe The Avenger series in order to draw the interest of readers of DocSavage Doc Savage to the new HeroPulpGenre hero pulp.
Comments/trivia
- Whether it was intentional or not, one of the most humorously named house names was HouseBrant Brant House, used by ChadwickPaul Paul Chadwick and others writing for PeriodicalHouse Periodical Houseís SecretAgentX Secret Agent X.
