Brooke Magnanti

Magnanti's pseudonym was derived from the 1928 novel Belle de jour by Joseph Kessel and the 1967 film of the same name starring Catherine Deneuve, directed by Luis Buñuel.

In the film, "Belle de Jour" is an expression translating literally as "daytime beauty", as Deneuve's character frequented the brothel during the daytime, when her husband was absent from home.

The expression is adapted from the French phrase "belle de nuit", which translates as "lady of the night", i.e. a prostitute.

Brooke Magnanti (born 5 November 1975) is an American-born naturalised British former research scientist, blogger, and writer, who, until her identity was revealed in November 2009, was known by the pen name Belle de Jour.

The Daily Telegraph's Stephen Adams said it had been "the new millennium's equivalent of the 1980s' search for the golden hare".

Such was the nature of the secret that Magnanti's colleagues did not know until one month before she went public, her publishers had been unaware of her true identity until the previous week and her parents found out on that weekend.

After signing her first book deal and starting writing articles for newspapers, only two other people were aware of her identity, her agent Patrick Walsh and her accountant, who handled the financial transactions via a shell corporation.

Magnanti commented that she had thought a former boyfriend was on the verge of outing her, and later reported him to the police for threats and harassment against her and her partner.

Writing on her blog on the day of the revelation, Magnanti stated:

"It feels so much better on this side. Not to have to tell lies, hide things from the people I care about. To be able to defend what my experience of sex work is like to all the sceptics and doubters. Anonymity had a purpose then – it will always have a reason to exist, for writers whose work is too damaging or too controversial to put their names on"

A spokesperson for the University of Bristol stated, "This aspect of Dr Magnanti's past is not relevant to her current role at the university", while her publisher said, "It's a courageous decision for Belle de Jour to come forward with her true identity and we support her decision to do so".

She graduated from the private Clearwater Central Catholic High School where she was named a National Merit Scholar in 1992.

She entered university at the age of 16, going on to receive a B.S. in 1996 from Florida State University.

Relocating to the United Kingdom, Magnanti studied for a master's degree in genetic epidemiology and PhD in forensic science from the University of Sheffield in England.

While completing her doctoral studies, between 2003 and 2004, Magnanti supplemented her income by working as a London call girl known by the working name Taro.

Her diary, published as the anonymous blog Belle de Jour: Diary of a London Call Girl, became increasingly popular as speculation surrounded the identity of Belle de Jour.

The weblog Belle de Jour: Diary of a London call girl first appeared in October 2003 and won the Guardian newspaper's Best British Weblog 2003, in the second year of the award's existence.

There was speculation in the media for several years as to the real identity of the author, whether Belle really was a call girl.

Guesses as to who Belle was ranged from Rowan Pelling to Toby Young according to The Telegraph.

According to The Guardian a fellow British blogger guessed her identity in 2003 but kept it secret.

He made a page on his blog containing the googlewhack of Belle de Jour and Brooke Magnanti that allowed him to see if anyone googled the two names.

Magnanti worked for 14 months as a £300-an-hour prostitute called Taro for a London escort agency from 2003, after submitting her PhD thesis.

She did so due to lack of funds before her viva voce at the University of Sheffield in 2003 and is estimated to have earned more than £100,000 in that period.

She had previously been a science blogger using her real name and started blogging about sex work under a pseudonym.

Diary of a London Call Girl was voted Blog of the Year by The Guardian newspaper in 2003.

Awards judge Bruce Sterling called it "Archly transgressive, anonymous hooker is definitely manipulating the blog medium, word by word, sentence by sentence far more effectively than any of her competitors ... She is in a league by herself as a blogger."

Shortly after receiving the award she signed with literary agency Conville and Walsh who negotiated a publishing deal with Weidenfeld & Nicolson.

Reviews of the books compared her writing to the works of Martin Amis and Nick Hornby, and she frequently quotes from the poems of Philip Larkin.

Themes of the blog and books include isolation and personae.

In 2004 The Sunday Times featured a front-page headline incorrectly identifying Sarah Champion as the author of the blog based on erroneous textual analysis by Donald Foster.

Remaining anonymous, Magnanti went on to have her experiences published as The Intimate Adventures of a London Call Girl in 2005 and The Further Adventures of a London Call Girl in 2006.

Her first two books were UK top 10 best-sellers in the nonfiction hardback and nonfiction paperback lists.

In 2007 Belle's blogs and books were adapted into a television programme, Secret Diary of a Call Girl starring Billie Piper as Belle, with the real name Hannah Baxter.

In November 2009, fearing her real identity was about to come out, Magnanti revealed her real name and occupation as a child health scientist.

In 2009 he identified IP addresses originating from Associated Newspapers that had accessed the page at which point he contacted Magnanti to alert her.

Around the same time tabloid reporters had been escorted from the hospital where she worked for breaking into her office.

On 15 November 2009, The Sunday Times revealed in an interview that the author's real name is Brooke Magnanti; she was 34 years of age at the time.

The Guardian's Paul Gallagher described it as the revelation of "one of the best kept literary secrets of the decade".

She is honoured in BBC's 100 Women in 2013 and 2014.

Born in New Port Richey, United States to an Italian American father and Jewish American mother, Magnanti grew up in Clearwater, Florida.