Sixth Anniversary of multiplewriters.blogspot.com (post 1,630): On Reading, Fiction Writing, & Multiple Personality Trait

During the past six years, this site has been visited more than a hundred thousand times, by people from around the world. That is a surprisingly large number, considering that the subject is a cross between literary criticism and psychiatry (and relatively few people are interested in both).

However, since the subject, ultimately, is normal psychology—multiple personality trait, which, by definition, doesn’t cause distress or dysfunction, is normal—this site may eventually be visited by millions of people. Not necessarily in my lifetime. I’m not holding my breath.

For sixth anniversary entertainment, selected from the previous 1,629 posts for no special reason, here is a group of five past posts on the most prolific author in history:

January 30, 2016

Frank Richards, one of 25 pseudonyms of Charles Hamilton, puts Joyce Carol Oates to shame: He was much more prolific, the most prolific author in history.

“Charles Harold St. John Hamilton (8 August 1876 – 24 December 1961) was an English writer, specializing in writing long-running series of stories for weekly magazines about recurrent casts of characters, his most frequent and famous genre being boys' public school stories, though he also dealt with other genres. He used a variety of pen-names [twenty-five, according to tomorrow’s New York Times Book Review], generally using a different name for each set of characters he wrote about, the most famous being Frank Richards for the Greyfriars School stories (featuring Billy Bunter)…It has been estimated by researchers Lofts and Adley that Hamilton wrote around 100 million words or the equivalent of 1,200 average length novels, making him the most prolific author in history” (Wikipedia).

Hamilton’s autobiography is titled “The Autobiography of Frank Richards,” as though Frank Richards were a person in his own right.

Pseudonyms have been a recurrent topic in this blog, because alternate personalities often have their own names.

Postscript: My title would have been more correct to say that Charles Hamilton (not Frank Richards) is the most prolific author in history. I guess I was thinking about the fact that the only autobiography written by Hamilton, judging by the title, was by and about Frank Richards, as though Richards, not Hamilton, were the person's regular, host personality.

Postpostscript: Was his Charles Hamilton personality a writer? If so, was he not the kind of writer who would write an autobiography?

April 15, 2016

Did Charles Hamilton, the most prolific writer in the English language, use twenty-eight pseudonyms (Frank Richards, et al) because of multiple personality?

Pseudonyms have been a recurrent topic here (search pseudonym), because the alternate personalities of a person with multiple personality often have their own names, which, for the person, are pseudonyms.

Of course, not everyone who uses pseudonyms does so because of multiple personality, but persons who use pseudonyms that have not been imposed on them by obvious circumstances should be suspected of having multiple personality until proven otherwise.

Indeed, some “obvious circumstances” for pseudonyms—like an author’s writing novels in more than one genre—may be only a rationalization for alternate personalities who want to publish under their own names.

I wonder if Charles Hamilton had multiple personality, but all I can say from reading a biography is that his personality had puzzling contradictions (which may be a clue to multiple personality) and his writing process was similar to that of other writers previously discussed.

Frank Richards, et al.

“Charles Harold St John Hamilton [1876-1961] used more than twenty pen-names, created almost a hundred fictional schools and published well over 72 million words of fiction, or the equivalent of a thousand novels. He is better known as Frank Richards, the pseudonym he used when writing about Greyfriars School and its imperishable inmates. He created St Jim’s as Martin Clifford and Rookwood School as Owen Conquest, but Frank Richards became more to him than just another pen-name — it was an alter ego…” (1, p. 1).

“Even when Hamilton had become the grand old man of boys’ writers, he retained a curiously Peter Pan-like quality” (1, p. 18). (Due to child-aged alternate personalities?)

“ ‘It was a curious thing that when I wrote I seemed to see it all happening before my eyes, as if I were looking at a picture. I had a sense of writing down actual happenings’ “ (1, p. 24).

“As Frank Richards he would write quite differently from Martin Clifford (and he seemed to feel that the pen-names themselves somehow governed this)” (1, p. 50).

“In some ways Frank Richards has always been an enigma. Apart from the phenomenon of the vastness of his literary output, there are the strange opposites in his nature, each of which seemed to find expression without involving him in the kind of conflict that someone of his sensitivity might be expected to feel. He was a long-term compulsive gambler, yet the code of behaviour he advocated for his readers with, apparently, total sincerity and conviction, was one that would have eschewed and, indeed, condemned gambling. Until he reached his early forties, he was addicted to traveling in Europe, but a decade later was extremely reclusive. With his interest in language and a passion for the classics, he was the antithesis of his most famous character, Bunter, yet breathed life into him in a way that has made him almost as archetypal as Cinderella. His published writings are more prolific than any other author’s in the English language, yet…according to his niece…he ‘always hoped to be able to break away from writing’ ” (1, p. 169).

“I have lived for fifty years by writing stories: but I still have not the remotest idea of how a story comes into existence…somehow or other — I have not the least idea how — the story took shape and form. I never knew what any character was going to say, till he said it: and seldom what he was going to do, till he did it. I suppose this must have been because the characters, to me, seemed to live: and being, for the moment, living people they had wills of their own and did what they liked. It is difficult for me to imagine an author writing in any other way then this: but no doubt different writers have different methods…

“[I] never did dictate…[since I didn’t think] that I could have talked as fast as I could type: fifty words a minute would be rather a strain on the vocal organs. And an author must work fast if his work is going to be any good: slow writing makes heavy reading. James Joyce told a man once that he had made ‘good progress’ one afternoon: he had written one sentence! After that, it hardly needs a glance at his work to see that it is worthless…

“A whole story was always floating in my mind when I began to write. It really is an odd process, which I do not quite understand myself: once you get going the characters seem to walk and talk of their own accord, as if the breath of life had been breathed into their nostrils: the author has little more to do than to record their sayings and doings. Sometimes it almost seems like writing to dictation” (1, pp. 206-207).

Charles Hamilton’s Twenty-Eight Pen-Names: “Michael Blake, Winston Cardew, Martin Clifford, Harry Clifton, Clifford Clive, Sir Alan Cobham, Owen Conquest, Gordon Conway, Frank Drake, Freeman Fox, Hamilton Greening, Cecil Herbert, Robert Jennings, Gillingham Jones, T. Harcourt Llewelyn, Clifford Owen, Ralph Redway, Frank Richards, Hilda Richards, Raleigh Robbins, Robert Rogers, Eric Stanhope, Robert Stanley, Peter Todd, Nigel Wallace, Talbot Wynyard” (1, Appendix Three).

1. Mary Cadogan. Frank Richards: The Chap Behind the Chums. London, Viking Penguin, 1988.

April 17, 2016

Charles Hamilton’s autobiography, “The Autobiography of Frank Richards,” has a third-person narrator, who may not be Charles Hamilton or Frank Richards.

As previously noted, “Frank Richards” was the best-known of Charles Hamilton’s twenty-eight pen names. I have just started to read Hamilton’s autobiography, and so far, it is unclear who the narrator is. He says:

“This is the Autobiography of Frank Richards: ipso facto that of Martin Clifford, Owen Conquest, and Charles Hamilton…Charles became so accustomed to the name of Frank Richards, that it grew to seem to him like his own. Since he has used that name, he has thought of himself more as Frank than as Charles: though undoubtedly he began as Charles in the earlier days…

“My readers will observe that these memoirs are written chiefly in the third person. Frank…dislikes a page spotted about with aggressive personal pronouns…He is still rather a diffident chap” (1, p. 18).

And the first three chapters (pp. 7-23) are, indeed, about Frank Richards, and are mostly in third person. For example, the first two sentences and first page say:

“Frank Richards, at seventeen, was at a loose end. He was in the perplexing state of not knowing what he was going to do…

“He wanted to be…an author…And in fact he did write…dating from the age of seven…” (1, p. 7).

Note: In multiple personality, the first alternate personalities arise to cope with childhood trauma. Here, one of the writing personalities, Frank Richards, appears to have originated when Charles Hamilton was seven, the year his father died of tuberculosis.

Now, although the narration is, as quoted above, “chiefly in the third person,” there are lapses; for example, at the bottom of the first page, referring to the writer’s first publisher: “Mr M. was a publisher and printer — I rather think that he was a big printer and a small publisher” (1, p. 7-8).

And above, in the very explanation quoted about why the third person will be used, there is “My readers.” And on the very next page (1, p. 19), there are one “me,” two “my,” and two “I.”

Why this inconsistency and self-contradiction? If Frank is so “diffident” (an adjective that is repeatedly applied to Frank by the narrator), and, because he is diffident, prefers to avoid “aggressive personal pronouns” like “me,” “my,” and “I,” why does he contradict himself, blatantly?

It appears that although Frank may be “rather a diffident chap,” this narrator, whoever he is, is not. Moreover, as quoted above, this narrator lumps the author’s actual name, Charles Hamilton, together with the pen names; indeed, considers it inferior to the pen names, as a name that has outlived its usefulness and whose time has passed.

Samuel Clemens’s pen name, Mark Twain, was featured in the title of his autobiography, which was written in the first person by Mark Twain. Charles Hamilton’s autobiography goes one step further. Not only is the pen name Frank Richards featured in the title of the autobiography, but it is written in the third person, possibly by some other, unnamed, alternate personality.

1. [no author specified]. The Autobiography of Frank Richards. London, Charles Skilton Ltd, 1952.

April 19, 2016

Charles Hamilton’s “The Autobiography of Frank Richards” (post 2): Beloved author of children’s literature on his successful multiple personality.

In this book, photographs of the author have the caption, Frank Richards (one of Charles Hamilton’s twenty-eight pseudonyms). This is neither a joke nor mental illness. It is a manifestation of the psychology that helped make him the most prolific fiction writer in the English language.

Did he think that his twenty-eight pen-name narrators were different people? No, by objective standards, but yes, psychologically:

“Charles [Hamilton] and Martin [Clifford] were one and the same person: but Charles did not write quite like Martin” (1, p. 35).

“…when he used the name, he would feel like a different person, and in consequence write from a somewhat different angle. I have been told—by men who do not write—that all this is fanciful: that a man’s work must be the same, whether he be called Cripps or Cholmondeley. This only means that they don’t understand…To relatives and bankers, and the Inspector of Taxes, I am still Charles Hamilton: to everybody else, including myself, Frank Richards” (1, p. 36).

“When Frank wrote ‘Ralph Redway’ on his title page, he became, to all intents and purposes, Ralph Redway, a person quite distinct from Frank Richards or Martin Clifford” (1, p. 176).

The above is a good example of a fiction writer’s normal version of multiple personality. It is normal because it did not cause him distress or dysfunction, but, in fact, was the basis of his successful writing career. The only thing unusual about it is that an alternate personality, Frank Richards, has assumed the role of host personality and admitted who he is publicly.

Did he think of it as multiple personality? That depends on how you interpret his anecdote in Chapter X about an editor whose “life was a queer kind of Jekyll-and-Hyde existence. His two characters ran side by side for years” (1, p. 69). I don’t know if this is truly about someone else or is an indirect way of talking about himself. At the very least, it shows that he thought about “Jekyll-and-Hyde” (a metaphor for multiple personality).

What about the issue I raised in the previous post as to who is narrating this autobiography? It is written mostly in the third person for the alleged reason that Frank Richards is “diffident” and does not like to use the first person.

Sometimes, like in the passage quoted above, concluding “to everybody else, including myself, Frank Richards,” the narrator does, indeed, seem to be the Frank Richards personality.

But at other times, the narrator seems to be someone else, commenting on Frank, for example:

“Characters ‘grew’ in Frank’s hands. They became more and more like themselves, if I may put it so” (1, p. 54).

In these instances, the narrator seems to be some other personality, who prefers to remain incognito, which is quite common in multiple personality.

In conclusion, this appears to be the autobiography of a person with multiple personality. The one thing it lacks to confirm the diagnosis is memory gaps (search “memory gaps”), which is probably because it is written from the point of view of alternate personalities, especially Frank Richards. The Charles Hamilton personality would have been more likely to report memory gaps.

1. [no author specified]. The Autobiography of Frank Richards. London, Charles Skilton Ltd., 1952.

April 20, 2016

Autobiography, Pseudonyms, Multiple Personality: Title pages that omit the author’s real name may be a sign that the author has multiple personality.

When the title page of an autobiography—by a famous author or anyone who is best known by a pen name or pseudonym of any kind—omits the person’s real name, most readers don’t give it a second thought.

But they should, since autobiographies are nonfiction, and when you read nonfiction, the least you have a right to expect is that the title page will give the author’s real name.

For example, the title page of “The Autobiography of Frank Richards” (search recent posts) did not give the author’s real name, Charles Hamilton. Why didn’t it? Because, psychologically speaking, it was not written by Charles Hamilton. It was written by his Frank Richards alternate personality.

In short, whenever the title page of an autobiography omits the author’s real name, it may be a sign of multiple personality. This is not, by itself, proof of multiple personality, but should make you wonder.