Anna Kavan
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is primarily a novelist and short story writer of the first half of the twentieth century, who based her writing quite closely on her life. In her writing, as well as in her life, there is a schism between the early novels, written as Helen Ferguson, and the later ones, written as
. When she took on the persona AK, based on one of her early characters, she wrote more boldly and brashly in content and style than she had done heretofore. AK's novels tend to revamp episodes from her unhappy childhood and from her excruciating first marriage.
Biography
There is no record of
changing her name by deed poll. Following a painful breakup and her first attempts to end her heroin addiction, she took the name of AK, her fictional alter ego. She later wrote, any act which shatters one's existential field is a suicide, however temporary, and gives one the opportunity of a fresh start. Her new name was thus a killing of her old self.
Biographer David Callard explains that
destroyed most of her correspondence and diaries, also that she adopted a completely new persona, purposely leaving little concrete evidence behind about her life.