Ashley Kirk 

Literary pseudonyms – quiz

As JK Rowling is revealed to have written under a 'liberating' pen name, test your knowledge of other pseudonyms down the years
  
  


  1. JK Rowling's pen name for The Cuckoo’s Calling was Robert Galbraith. What genre does the book belong to?

    1. Fantasy

    2. Crime fiction

    3. Children’s literature

    4. Romance

  2. Who created plentiful pseudonyms out of anagrams of their real name?

    1. Edward Gorey

    2. Martin Amis

    3. Kurt Vonnegut

    4. Lewis Carroll

  3. What surname did literary sisters Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë adopt?

    1. Babbage

    2. Bell

    3. Black

    4. Barker

  4. What alter ego did Booker winner John Banville create for his crime novels?

    1. Owen McDonald

    2. William White

    3. Declan Davies

    4. Benjamin Black

  5. By which pen name is Eric Arthur Blair popularly known?

    1. Aldous Huxley

    2. Graham Greene

    3. George Orwell

    4. Evelyn Waugh

  6. Whose real name was Samuel Langhorne Clemens?

    1. F Scott Fitzgerald

    2. Karl Marx

    3. Mark Twain

    4. Roald Dahl

  7. Which author announced that their alter ego died of “cancer of the pseudonym, a rare form of schizonomia"?

    1. Stephen King

    2. John Banville

    3. Jonathan Freedland

    4. Louisa May Alcott

  8. Which acclaimed crime writer published non-genre books under the pen name Mary Westmacott?

    1. Margery Allingham

    2. Agatha Christie

    3. Patricia Highsmith

    4. Ruth Rendell

  9. Which unconventional Edwardian writer, suffragette, and socialist adopted the pen name Rebecca West after a character in an Ibsen play?

    1. Lillie Langtry

    2. Beatrix Potter

    3. Cicely Isabel Fairfield

    4. Emily Wilding Davison

  10. What is JK Rowling's middle name?

    1. Kathleen

    2. Kim

    3. She doesn't have one - her publisher wanted a name with two initials

    4. Karen

Solutions

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

Scores

  1. 0 and above.

    Oh dear! Are you better at remembering faces than names? Better luck next time

  2. 5 and above.

    Promising! You have an eye for spotting the author behind the name, but need to do a little more reading

  3. 9 and above.

    Well done! Despite the Brontës’ adversity to "personal publicity", you traced the writers’ true identities with forensic skill

 

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