“... a noisy crowd circa 1609 was to invoke an audience for Pericles: describing a packed inn, the anonymous author of the pamphlet Pimlyco or Runne Red-cap is ‘Amazde … to see a Crowd/… stretch out so lowd …/So that I truly thought all These/Came to see Shore [Thomas Heywood’s Edward IV] or Pericles.’ On the page, as well as the stage, Pericles ...”

“... their number has grown over the years, as earlier identifications have proved untenable. Now these anonymous sitters are distinguished only by some particularity of costume or composition – ‘Unknown Woman with a Thistle’ or ‘a Cherry’, ‘a Jewelled Hat’, ‘a Lace Cap’, ‘Standing in a Room’, ‘in Bed’ or simply ‘Unfinished’.These ...”

“... but not generally hostile. It was 15 years since Robert Chambers had caused a sensation with the anonymous publication of his Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation. Prince Albert read it aloud to Queen Victoria, and in his novel Tancred, where it features as The Revelations of Chaos, Disraeli parodied both Vestiges and the craze it started. Lady ...”

“... venereal infection used the connection to present protected sex as more heroic than unarmoured. An anonymous mock-epic of 1744, The Machine, or Love’s Preservative (‘In Imitation of Homer and Virgil, and Dryden and Pope’), took the colonel as its hero: ‘In cundum’s Praise/I sing.’ The poem attacks those stupid enough to venture ‘all unarm’d to ...”

“... Y in New York City to the lone chair behind a book-signing table, while a line of hundreds of anonymous readers – each with her own personal Zadie Smith experience to recount during the moment she held the author’s attention – filled the room and stretched beyond where the eye could follow. As with Bieber’s fans, the highlight of each ...”

“... unceremoniously rapes her. This conclusion resonates, for the teller of the tale is not some anonymous spear-carrier sweating Dutch courage, but the blacksmith Ignat, whose subsequent death in battle will exemplify the redemption of the artisanal class through sacrifice. Alexander hangs around long enough to confirm the brutal outcome of the parable in a ...”

“... from The Execution, placed this time on the left, their target no longer a hapless Habsburg but an anonymous Communard backed up against another wall of cobbles: the sweep of his arm, magnificently and impossibly extended – he is bravely waving his hat – marks a separation between him and his killers, a sort of rupture that Manet created by leaving the ...”

“... death: ‘And then the arrows came. From all directions. Thudding into walls and roof and earth. Anonymous and deadly.’) In an apparent bid for linguistic correctness, he introduces a range of characters with tongue-twisting names like Chithrafarna and Khashayarsha (these being transliterations of the Old Persian for ‘Tissaphernes’ and ...”

“... the crowds thicken and I have to push my bicycle. The going is hot and slow, but I feel relatively anonymous. Sixteen years ago I drew small crowds of onlookers. The first two streets I reach used to be dominated by carpenters and calligraphers. Spring sunlight lit densely decorated bedsteads and finely carved cupboards. Today, the carpenters have been ...”

“... Early in 1812 Caroline was so impressed by Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, that she wrote Byron an anonymous fan letter. Then, ‘one night at Lady Westmorland’s’, she recounted much later, ‘the women were all throwing their heads’ at the poet. After Lady Westmorland led her up to him, she continued, ‘I looked earnestly at him, and turned on my ...”

“... The Exhumation of St Hubert, painted around 1437 in the workshop of Rogier van der Weyden, and the anonymous Mass of Saint Giles of about 1500. In each case, Koerner’s a priori conviction of the theological marginality of the medieval laity is so strong that it causes him to misread what is plainly before him on the painted surface. Van der Weyden’s ...”

“... and craftsmanlike, and as useful for the future, as it possibly could be. Most of the book’s anonymous stories speak to the third charge. Every few pages some Justice is at work flattering another Justice in hopes of winning more influence within the Court, or trimming some opinion he is drafting in order to persuade some other Justice to join his ...”

“... Corner Window’, included in Wortsman’s collection, takes the form of a dialogue between the anonymous narrator and his cousin, an author now on his deathbed – as Hoffmann was when he wrote the story – who was famous for ‘pumping out all manner of charming narratives’ (this is a bit of a leap from the original ‘allerlei anmutige Geschichten ...”

“... PlayStation, giving myself brain damage.’ She moves into the spare room of a friend of a friend. Anonymous women return: those who have attended her readings (like Debré, she has become an infamous author), those she picks up at cafés, a female police officer she eyes up. She sleeps with a ‘real butch, for a change’. The catalogue continues: ‘I go ...”

“... clear and coherent with its all-verse unity, compared to the sense of confusion and formless, anonymous bustle that many have found in Henry VI Part I. Henry has nothing like the superb theatrical rhetoric, in both word and action, that accompanies Richard. There was for Shakespeare, as there still is now, little to say about Henry. Not without decency ...”