According to Wikipedia:
Two of John F. Kennedy’s books were almost entirely ghostwritten. Former President Ronald Reagan also released a ghostwritten autobiography….
[T]he purported author of the Nancy Drew mystery series, “Carolyn Keene”, is actually a pseudonym for a series of ghostwriters who write books in the same style using a template of basic information about the book’s characters and their fictional universe (names, dates, speech patterns), and about the tone and style that are expected in the book….
The estate of romance novelist V. C. Andrews hired a ghostwriter to continue writing novels after her death, under her name and in a similar style to her original works. Many of action writer Tom Clancy’s books from the 2000s bear the names of two people on their covers, with Clancy’s name in larger print and the other author’s name in smaller print. Various books bearing Clancy’s name were written by different authors under the same pseudonym. The first two books in the Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell franchise were written by Raymond Benson under the pseudonym David Michaels.
Sometimes famous authors will ghostwrite for other celebrities as well, such as when H.P. Lovecraft ghostwrote science fiction stories for Harry Houdini in science fiction magazines in the 1920s….
A number of papal encyclicals have been written by ghostwriters. Pascendi, for instance, was written by Joseph Lemius (1860-1923), the procurator in Rome of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate.
In June 1938, Pius XI summoned American Jesuit John La Farge, who began to prepare a draft of Humani Generis Unitas, which LaFarge and two other Jesuits—Gustav Gundlach and Gustave Desbuquois—on in Paris; the draft was approximately 100 pages long. Another Jesuit translated the draft encyclical into Latin, presenting it to Vladimir Ledochowski, then the General of the Society of Jesus who had chosen Gundlach and Desbuquois for the project. The draft encyclical was delivered to the Vatican in September 1938.
Sebastian Tromp, a Dutch Jesuit, a solid Thomist theologian and close to Pope Pius XII, is considered to be the main ghost writer of Mystici Corporis. As advisor to Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani during Vatican II, he is, according to existing tape recordings and diaries, also the father of “subsistit”, which to his understanding of Latin, did not mean anything new but indicates completeness….
In hip-hop music, the increasing use of ghostwriters by high-profile hip-hop stars has led to controversy, because “Rapping is about you expressing yourself through your own words, not someone else’s.” Eye Weekly reported that MC Rhymefest did ghostwriting for Kanye West and Ol’ Dirty Bastard, Texan rapper The D.O.C. did ghostwriting for Dr. Dre, and Jadakiss did ghostwriting for Puffy, who later bragged “Don’t worry if I write rhymes, I write checks.”
Other famous ghost writers include:
