i need to find some fictional writing by a female author and a male author. not sure who to use?

Question

This is for a class exercise but they will not know who wrote the stories. They have to guess if it is a man or woman. I was thinking of jane austen but would that be too obvious. Not sure who to use?

Answer 1

Leo Tostoy's Anna Karenina, I believe you could stump them with that one.

Answer 2

Jane Austen would only be obvious if you used a contemporary novel with it, as most children now would associate the old style language with a female author. How about To kill a mockingbird or The Bell Jar (back story to Sylvia Plath's life is so compelling) Frankenstein (for the female)

Man and Boy, 1984, Hannibal, The Tessaract, The Beach (for the men) try and keep them as neutral as possible, just by the title alone you'll know if its too obvious!

Good luck sounds like a really good exercise!

Answer 3

If you want to be really clever you could choose George Eliot who really was a woman called Mary Anne Evans - she wrote the books Middlemarch and Silas Marner under a pen name as no one would buy books written by women at the time. Therefore you are being interesting by using a book supposedly written by a man but was actually a woman.

Other good classics are Wilkie Collins - The Woman in White (male author) or the Bronte Sisters - Emily Bronte wrote Wuthering Heights and Charlotte Bronte wrote Jane Eyre.

I have a degree in English Literature and these would be some of my first choices.

Answer 4

You may fool them with Daphne DuMaurier or Ayn Rand. Both women wrote some compelling fiction that isn't girly at all. DuMaurier wrote the short story that became the film The Birds, among other things. Her novel Jamaica Inn is about a family of smugglers on the Cornwall coast that deliberately wrecks ships and claims the cargo that washes ashore. Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead has a main character, Howard Roark, who is an architect.

Answer 5

Orson Scott Card
Kay Hooper
George R Martin
Mercedes Lackey

Answer 6

I was going to make the same suggestion as Linzre about George Eliot that would be really clever and surely worth a few bonus points, I wish I had a degree in English Lit too since it is a favourite topic of mine

Answer 7

Try Kelley Armstrong/Karin Slaughter/Kathy Reichs for a female author. Augusten Burroughs/Harlen Coben/or the weirdly wonderful Clive Barker for male.

Answer 8

Under the Skin by Michel Faber...especially the intro....most people would guess at female.
errr....and how about a bit from Lovely Bones, or We Need to Talk About Kevin? first by female, second male.

Answer 9

Try John Steinbeck. He is very sympathetic to his subjects so it might fool someone into thinking a female wrote it, since females are seen as the sympathetic members of our society.

Answer 10

Grr, Linzre got their first with George Eliot. You could use William Makepeace Thackeray and his Barchester Chronicles for your male example.

Answer 11

If the class you are teaching is an adult one, I would thoroughly recommend Martina Cole, she writes like a bloke. Her books are very graphical in every detail. You really do feel like you are living in one of her stories.