Where more exact kinds of identification are impossible, may there be ways by which we can detect the gender of an author? Most readers of fiction will have had the experience of detecting a certain unreality or incompleteness in depictions of characters of their own sex by members of the other. For women this may involve a dissatisfaction with Madame Bovary or Anna Karenina as lacking a true female inwardness, while a male reader of Wuthering Heights may recognise shrewd observation of a certain type in Heathcliff but be genuinely puzzled by what makes Edgar Linton tick (or not tick). Readers of either sex would probably assume that if they were given a selection of ten anonymous short stories, half of which were written by women and half by men, they could have a pretty good shot at working out which were which – Red Symons has actually provided such a collection, with the authors listed but not their contributions. Extend the scope to whole novels and we would expect even better results, since we would not only have fuller exposure to tone and style but there would be more chance of encountering the kind of factual detail that immediately betrays. Non-fiction would pose more of a challenge; but even here it is not impossible that we might be able to locate preferred male and female forms of style and exposition. Work by Mary Hiatt and Estelle Irizarry, discussed at the end of the chapter, proceeds on this assumption.