National Women's History Museum: Women with a Deadline

Cornelia Bradford became the publisher of Philadelphia 's American Weekly Mercury in 1742 following the death of her husband. The Mercury was the fourth newspaper to be published in the colonies, and the first in the mid-Atlantic region. Bradford edited and published the periodical with little assistance. After selling the paper she continued to work as a bookbinder and printer.

Anne Catherine Hoff Green, mother of six (eight others had died), published her husband's Maryland Gazette during his illness and continued after he died in 1767. Green used her new, highly influential position to publicize controversies within the Anglican Church and debates over the Stamp and Townshend Acts. She also asserted a forward-thinking feminist principle when she won the right to be paid the same amount her husband had received for the same work. Green was named Maryland 's official printer, carrying out contracts for the Maryland General Assembly.

Clementina Rind took over the Williamsburg Virginia Gazette after her husband died in 1773. Rind ran the paper until her own death in September of 1774. In May 1774, the House of Burgesses recognized her as Virginia 's official public printer. During her short tenure as publisher, Rind's periodical highlighted new scientific research, debates on education, and philanthropic causes. Rind is also known for being the first to print Thomas Jefferson's “Ideas on American Freedom” and for her staunch insistence that writers refrain from using pseudonyms or anonymity. She asserted, “As I am in some measure, amenable to the public for what appears in my Gazette, I cannot think myself authorized to publish an anonymous piece.”

Pseudonyms
Although publishers today often discourage the use of pseudonyms, both male and female journalists have employed this tactic throughout the history of American journalism. Among those women who published under a different name are Jane Cunningham Croly (a.k.a. Jennie June), Sarah Payton Parson (a.k.a. Fanny Fern), and Elizabeth Meriwether Gilmer (a.k.a. Dorothy Dix). Men such as John Ferguson Hume (a.k.a. Wyllis Niles), in an 1872 report on Tammany Hall, also employed this tactic.

Sometimes female journalists wrote under male names to break into publishing or to avoid public criticism for their participation in a “male” profession. Other pen names, however, did not conceal gender, but instead were merely the adoption of a different feminine identity that allowed the writer to be incognito. This ensured that their career in writing did not interfere with their social status and enabled them to change styles or express opinions anonymously. Even such famous women as Harriet Beecher Stowe and Louisa May Alcott used pseudonyms, especially in writing for periodicals.

Furthermore, pseudonyms or pen names were employed by both men and women so as to protect themselves from dissenters of a controversial piece. For example, during the Colonial and Revolutionary eras, those who publicized their criticism of the British monarchy risked imprisonment and severe punishment. Consequently, many employed pseudonyms or anonymity in order to protect themselves from legal entanglements or violent opposition. The famous newspaper series, “Letters from a Pennsylvania Farmer,” for instance, was written by a Philadelphia lawyer, John Dickinson, who had never farmed. Mercy Otis Warren used a variety of pseudonyms to hide her authorship of anti-British material that she published in Boston .

Both male and female writers also used pseudonyms as a marketing tool. There are examples of male writers who published literature aimed at a female audience, and therefore chose a female pseudonym, believing it would help sales. Women could employ male pseudonyms in order to attract a wider readership and to speak with greater (if faux) authority in a society where women's political and social opinions were undervalued.