Brontë family "Wuthering Heights" and "Agnes Grey", had launched a rumour that the three novels were the work of one author, understood to be Ellis Bell (Emily). George Smith was extremely surprised to find two gawky, ill-dressed country girls paralysed with fear, who, to identify themselves, held out the letters addressed to "Messrs. Acton, Currer and Ellis Bell". Taken by such surprise, he introduced them to his mother with all the dignity their talent merited, and invited them to the opera for a performance of Rossini's "Barber of Seville". Emily Brontë's "Wuthering Heights" was published in 1847 under the masculine pseudonym Ellis
Kate O'Brien (novelist) at her local Boots library, which prepares the audience for the moral dilemmas that the character is about to face. This offers a good example of how popular Kate O'Brien was in the 1940s, before falling into obscurity for decades, only to be 'rediscovered' as a key writer in the 1980s. In the 1930s one of the notorious members of Ferguson's Gang adopted the pseudonym 'Kate O'Brien the Nark' in tribute to Kate. Kate O'Brien (novelist) Kate O'Brien (3 December 1897 – 13 August 1974) was an Irish novelist and playwright. Kathleen Mary Louise "Kate" O'Brien was born in Limerick