During his prolific pre-war period Robert Heinlein used the pseudonym Anson MacDonald for many of his non-future history stories in Astounding, including some famous ones like “Waldo” and “By His Bootstraps.”
“Waldo” and “Magic, Incorporated” were published as a book in 1950 under the Heinlein name (his first book for adults, interestingly), so the secret was obviously out then.
Was there an earlier announcement? If so, when and where? Heinlein stopped selling to Campbell when he started selling to the big slick magazines after the war, so there was no reason for *Astounding *to mention it. There were plenty of fanzines that might have, but I can’t remember a reference to this. It’s not mentioned in Grumbles from the Grave or the new Patterson biography.
Any thoughts from the Heinlein buffs?
No idea. By the time I started reading his stuff in the seventies I believe that most of the MacDonald stuff had been republished under Heinlein.
It was known fairly early on; by the time The Past Through Tomorrow was published in 1967, the stories were all credited to Heinlein.
Even earlier, Waldo (published as Macdonald) was republished as by Heinlein in 1950.
Apparently John W. Campbell slipped up once and announced a forthcoming story by Heinlein which was subsequently published under the MacDonald name.
It also appears that while Heinlein used MacDonald only due to multiple stories appearing in a single issue, he used other pennames such as Lyle Monroe and Caleb Sanders to sell off stories that had been rejected by the top tier magazines. Heinlein probably could have sold them easier to the second string publishers with his established name on them but he used pennames to disassociate these stories from his reputation. And he took steps to conceal his connection with these pennames that he didn’t take with the MacDonald penname.
Another trivia note is that Anson was Heinlein’s middle name and MacDonald was his wife’s maiden name (not Virginia, his second wife Leslyn). But some references mistakenly list Heinlein’s full name as Robert Anson MacDonald Heinlein.
http://www.nitrosyncretic.com/rah/rahfaq.html
In the words of the late Johnny Carson, “I did not know that.” And I’m a huge fan of RAH’s work.