Four words have been underlined in the given sentence. One of them is…

Concept — A spot-the-error spelling item tests orthographic form, not meaning. Each underlined word is matched letter by letter against its standard dictionary spelling. The commonest error type in such items is metathesis: two adjacent letters swapped, which leaves the word looking and sounding almost right.

Application — Matching each underlined word in the sentence against its standard dictionary form:

• sophisticated — agrees with the standard form of the adjective meaning ‘refined, complex or highly developed’ (Latin sophisticare + the participial ending -ated).

• criticism — agrees with the standard form: the noun critic plus the noun-forming suffix -ism, with no change to the base.

• biography — agrees with the standard form: the Greek elements bio- (‘life’) and -graphy (‘writing’) joined by the linking vowel -o-.

• hithreto — does not agree with any standard form. The adverb meaning ‘up to this time’ is hitherto, built from hither + to. The printed word carries -hre- where the standard form carries -her-, so the letters r and e have been transposed.

Cross-check — restoring the standard spelling gives ‘… the sophisticated arts hitherto so little practised by women …’, which reads naturally with the intended sense ‘up to this time’. Also note that practised and criticism are the standard British-English forms used throughout the passage, so neither is an error. The misspelt word is therefore hithreto, whose correct spelling is hitherto.