W.N.P. Barbellion (1889-1917)

Pseudonym of Bruce Frederick Cummings (1889-1919). 'W.N.P.' stands for 'Wilhelm Nero Pilate', which puts him up there in the pseudonym stakes alongside James Thomson (B.V.). I've just read The Journal of a Disappointed Man, which is amazing. Here is a not particularly representative extract which gives you an idea of how he viewed himself:

'My father was Sir Thomas Browne and my mother Marie Bashkirtseff. See what a curious hybrid I am!'

Here is a more representative extract:

'To-day I have reviewed the situation carefully, exhaustively. I have peered into every aspect of my life and achievements and everything I have seen nauseates me. I can find no ray of comfort in anything I have done or in anything I might do. My life seems to have been a wilderness of futile endeavour. I started wrong from the very beginning. At the moment of my birth I was coming into the world in the wrong place and under wrong conditions. Why seek to overcome such colossal initial disadvantages. In this mood I found fault with my parentage, my inheritance, all my mental and physical disabilities.'

It's a great book. Marie Bashkirtseff, incidentally, is a Ukrainian artist and diarist whose diary was published in English in 1889 as I Am The Most Interesting Book Of All. Here is one of her pictures, Jeune fille lisant la question du divorce (1880)