Olphar Hamst was the pseudonym — an anagram — of Ralph Thomas (b. 1840), an English bibliographer. Under the pen name Thomas produced two notable reference works on literary pseudonymity. The Handbook of Fictitious Names (1868), in full Being a Guide to Authors, Chiefly in the Lighter Literature of the XIXth Century, Who Have Written Under Assumed Names, and to Literary Forgers, Impostors, Plagiarists, and Imitators, was a pioneering guide unmasking Victorian pen names, literary hoaxers, and impostors; it was later superseded in scope by Halkett and Laing's multi-volume Dictionary of Anonymous and Pseudonymous English Literature. Aggravating Ladies catalogued works published under the generic pseudonym "A Lady." Thomas was also known for a biographical sketch of the French bibliographer Joseph-Marie Quérard, published as A Martyr to Bibliography. The fitting irony of Olphar Hamst — a cataloguer of hidden authorial identities who himself wrote under a hidden identity — is part of what has kept the name a small curiosity in bibliographic history, where his own works are still catalogued as "Hamst, Olphar [i.e. Ralph Thomas]."
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