ANONYMOUS, usually abbreviated to ANON., a term to in dicate unnamed authorship of any composition. The earliest pub lished researches into the subject of anonymous literature were those of Fredericus Geisler (Leipzig, 1669). The first comprehen sive work was that of Vincent Placcius (1642-69), developed by Matthias Dreyer into the Theatrum anonymorum et pseudony morum (1708). An immense advance was made by the French bibliographer Antoine-Alexandre Barbier in his Dictionnaire (18o6–o8), of which a new edition with over 23,000 entries, was issued in 1822-27, and which in 1872-79 was made a continuation of the valuable Supercheries litteraires of Querard. Nothing of value, except casual contributions to Notes and Queries, was done in England till in 1856 Samuel Halkett, keeper of the Advocates' library, Edinburgh, began the labours continued by John Laing (1882-88). The most ambitious dictionaries of na tional literatures other than English and French are the Deutsclies anonymenlexicon begun by M. Holzmann and H. Bohatta, of Vienna in 1902 and Gaetano Melzi's Dizionario di opere anonime e pseudoniane di scrittori italiani (1848–J9).
Religious tolerance, political liberty and social change have affected the motives of anonymity, but it remains common, partly because it is hoped in certain cases that anonymity will excite a profitable curiosity or lend weight to dogmatism which would not have any if the author's name were known. The commonest of those pseudonyms which are in effect anonyms in English has been "A Lady," about i,000 works, "By A Lady" being on record. Anonymity and pseudonymity were astonishingly common in English literature between and i 800—Def oe, Chatterton, Macpherson, and earlier Dryden, being cases in point. Among modern English writers who have at least once resorted, or have been required by serial publications to resort, to these devices are Beddoes, Robert Bridges, Bulwer-Lytton, Samuel Butler, Hardy and Meredith.
See W. Cushing, Anonyms (189o) ; W. P. Courtney, Secrets of our National Literature (1908). (T. E. W.)