The Three Voices of Anne Rice: Multiple Personality as the Reason for Pseudonyms

Anne Rice, famous for her vampire novels, and having already used one pseudonym, A. N. Roquelaure, chose a second pseudonym, Anne Rampling, as her “California voice.” “She was beginning to feel as if she had three distinct personalities…Later she referred to her body of work as ‘the divided self’” (1, p.225).

“When I moved back here [New Orleans], all of that changed. In The Witching Hour it was as if my vocabulary doubled or tripled. My access to memory accelerated one hundred or two hundred percent, and a great explosion of the novel resulted in about five months’ time…The first four or five chapters had taken five years out in California, and then the entire remainder of the book took five months…Well, this was really when Rampling and Roquelaure died, because once I came home, I was able to get in touch with all that as Anne Rice. There was never any need for a pseudonym after that…All at once I was able to have lots of different voices…and so finally all three voices were together for me in that book” (2, pp. 115-116).

In other words, she had had three literary voices—three distinct personalities—each with its own name: Anne Rice and her two pseudonyms. For some reason, moving back home to New Orleans resulted in the integration of these three personalities into one; or, at least, the three personalities were now co-conscious and working together.

Thus, all of the memories and vocabulary that had been divided among three segregated, estranged, individually named personalities were now available to one integrated writer personality, Anne Rice, or to one team of writer personalities all working under the name of Anne Rice.

In multiple personality, can such spontaneous integrations happen? Yes, they can. Especially if the personalities involved were not that far apart to begin with, as suggested in this case by all three names beginning with the letter “R.”

That Anne Rice may have had other personalities besides these three is suggested by “All at once I was able to have lots of different voices.” But regardless of how many personalities she had, if they were all now integrated, or at least communicating and working together, then she no longer needed pseudonyms.

Most novelists probably have the same reason for using pseudonyms, whatever other reasons they also have.

1. Katherine Ramsland. Prism of the Night: A Biography of Anne Rice. New York, Dutton, 1991.

2. Michael Riley. Conversations with Anne Rice. New York, Ballantine, 1996.