LETTER OF THE MONTH
Pirates and pen names
Sam Willis's entertaining article about Charles Johnson's scandalous works popularising robbers, pirates and highwaymen (Murder and Mayhem in Georgian Britain, March) reignites a long controversy about the true identity of the author.
Although the so-called “Captain” Johnson demonstrates a sound knowledge of seafarers’ speech and lifestyle in his books, no record exists of any contemporary captain or pirate of that name. Captain Johnson was therefore probably the pen name of a London writer-publisher exploiting the name of dramatist Charles Johnson, who had staged a successful play about pirates a few years earlier.
Literary scholar JR Moore suggested that Daniel Defoe was the real
