This article is more than 13 years oldAusterity in literatureThis article is more than 13 years oldAs George Osborne outlines his £6bn spending cuts today, ushering in a new 'age of austerity', test your knowledge of hard times in literature1.Who is the author of the recent non-fiction title, Austerity Britain, 1945-1951?Antony BeevorAN WilsonChristopher HitchensDavid KynastonReveal2."When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I managed to survive at all. It was, of course, a miserable childhood: the happy childhood is hardly worth your while," writes Frank McCourt. "People everywhere brag and whimper about the woes of their early years, but nothing can compare with the Irish version." In which Irish city did the author grow up?CorkShannonLimerickDublinReveal3.In which children's novel does poverty force the protagonists to cut up their curtains to make clothes?A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson BurnettThe Wolves of Willoughby Chase by Joan AikenHarry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone by JK RowlingGoodnight Mr Tom by Michelle MagorianReveal4.“It is altogether curious, your first contact with poverty. You have thought so much about poverty - it is the thing you have feared all your life, the thing you knew would happen to you sooner or later; and it, is all so utterly and prosaically different. You thought it would be quite simple; it is extraordinarily complicated. You thought it would be terrible; it is merely squalid and boring. It is the peculiar lowness of poverty that you discover first; the shifts that it puts you to, the complicated meanness, the crust-wiping.” Said who?Henry David ThoreauDave PelzerGeorge OrwellVictor HugoReveal5.Wilkins Micawber is eternally in debt in Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield. What is a Micawber today?A spendthriftSomeone who is poor but optimisticSomeone who is in and out of prisonSomeone who is hopeless with moneyReveal6."I can get no remedy against this consumption of the purse; borrowing only lingers and lingers it out, but the disease is incurable." Says which Shakespearian character?Richard IIShylockMercutioFalstaffReveal7.What is the cost of the ferry to cross the Mersey – a small amount but too much for her family to afford – in Helen Forrester's memoir of growing up before the Welfare state?ThruppenceTwopenceA shillingA farthingReveal8."As for chimney-sweeping, and being hungry, and being beaten, he took all that for the way of the world, like the rain and snow and thunder..." What is the name of Charles Kingsley's sweep in his children's classic, The Water Babies?TimBoyTomLaurieReveal9.Who retires to live in genteel poverty with her parents following the death of her husband George?Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the WindAmelia in Vanity FairTess in Tess of the DurbervillesAda Clare in Bleak HouseReveal10."Men stood by their fences and looked at the ruined corn, drying fast now, only a little green showing through the film of dust ... And the women came out of the houses to stand beside their men - to feel whether this time the men would break." Where are the crops destroyed, forcing the poverty-stricken Joad family to travel west, in John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath?OklahomaKansasArkansasMissouriRevealExplore more on these topicsCultureFictionquizzesShareReuse this content