1. What did Virginia Woolf declare a woman needed if she were to write fiction?

   1. A window and a desk

   2. A wife and a nursemaid

   3. A considerate husband

   4. Money and a room of her own

2. Which book was written "to persuade women to endeavour to acquire strength, both of mind and body, and to convince them that the soft phrases, susceptibility of heart, delicacy of sentiment, and refinement of taste, are almost synonymous with epithets of weakness"?

   1. The Female Eunuch by Germaine Greer

   2. The Bitch Rules by Elizabeth Wurtzel

   3. A Vindication of the Rights of Women by Mary Wollstonecraft

   4. Declaration of Sentiments by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott

3. Which playwright, novelist and spy was described as the first English woman to earn her living by writing?

   1. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu

   2. Aphra Behn

   3. Fanny Burney

   4. Susannah Centlivre

4. How is The Right Honorable Baroness of Holland Park, creator of Adam Dalgliesh, more commonly known?

   1. HD

   2. Eloisa James

   3. PD James

   4. EL James

5. Who said the Orange Prize was 'sexist' and 'assumes there is a feminine subject matter – which I don't believe in'?

   1. Kate Atkinson

   2. Joanna Trollope

   3. Kate Mosse

   4. AS Byatt

6. How old was Mary Shelley when she wrote Frankenstein?

   1. 23

   2. 21

   3. 16

   4. 18

7. Which poet, in 1982, became the first to win the Pulitzer prize posthumously?

   1. Sylvia Plath

   2. Gertrude Stein

   3. Radclyffe Hall

   4. Edith Sitwell

8. Who was the first woman to become a Slade Professor at Cambridge?

   1. Anita Brookner

   2. Effie Gray

   3. Virgina Woolf

   4. Margaret Forster

9. Who fought Fire with Fire in a plea for a more inclusive feminism?

   1. Natasha Walter

   2. Naomi Wolf

   3. Gloria Steinem

   4. Susan Faludi

10. Which book details Mrs Rochester's life before she is imprisoned in the attic in Jane Eyre?

    1. Mrs Rochester by Hilary Bailey

    2. Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys

    3. The Women's Room by Marilyn French

    4. The Madwoman in the Attic by Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar

Solutions

1:D, 2:C, 3:B, 4:C, 5:D, 6:D, 7:A, 8:A, 9:B, 10:B

Scores

1. 0 and above.

   You don't know your Byatt from your Drabble. Give it another try.

2. 5 and above.

   Not bad, but more middling than Middlemarch.

3. 10 and above.

   You're a Colossus!