literary quiz- questions & answers

1. What word, extended from a more popular term, refers to a fictional book of between 20,000 and 50,000 words? Novella
2. Who wrote the famous 1855 poem The Charge of the Light Brigade? Lord Alfred Tennyson (1809-92)
3. In 1960 the UK publishing ban was lifted on what 1928 book? Lady Chatterley's Lover (by D H Lawrence)
4. In bookmaking how many times would an quarto sheet be folded? Twice (to create four leaves)
5. Who wrote the seminal 1936 self-help book How to Win Friends and Influence People? Dale Carnegie
6. Who in 1450 invented movable type, thus revolutionising printing? Johannes Gutenberg
7. Which Polish-born naturalised British novelist's real surname was Korzeniowski? Joseph Conrad (1857-1924, full name Jozef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski)
8. Which short-lived dramatist is regarded as the first great exponent of blank verse? Christopher Marlowe (1564-93 - Blank verse traditionally is unrhymed, comprising ten syllables per line, stressing every second syllable.)
9. Who wrote the maxim 'Cogito, ergo sum' (I think, therefore I am)? René Descartes (1596-1650, French philosopher and mathematician, in his work Discours de la Méthode, 1637.)
10. Who was the youngest of the three Brontë writing sisters? Anne Brontë (1820-49 - other sisters were Emily, 1818-48, and Charlotte, 1816-55, plus a brother, Branwell, 1817-48. The two oldest sisters, Maria and Elizabeth died in childhood.)
11. What is the Old English heroic poem, surviving in a single copy dated around the year 1000, featuring its eponymous 6th century warrior from Geatland in Sweden? Beowulf
12. What relatively modern school of philosophy, popular in literature since the mid 1900s, broadly embodies the notion of individual freedom of choice within a disorded and inexplicable universe? Existentialism
13. What was the pen-name of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson? Lewis Carroll (1832-98)
14. Who wrote Dr Zhivago? Boris Leonidovich Pasternak (1890-1960)
15. What term and type of comedy is derived from the French word for stuffing? Farce or farcical (from the French farcir, to stuff, based on analogy between stuffing in cookery and the insertion of frivolous material into medieval plays.)
16. What term originally meaning 'storehouse' referred, and still refers, to a periodical of various content and imaginative writing? Magazine
17. Who wrote the significant scientific book Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica, published in 1687? Isaac Newton (1642-1727)
18. What 16th century establishment in London's Bread Street was a notable writers' haunt? The Mermaid Tavern
19. Who wrote the 1845 poem The Pied Piper of Hamelin? Robert Browning (1812-89)
20. Which American poet and humanist wrote and continually revised a collection of poems called Leaves of Grass? Walt Whitman (1819-92 - the title is apparently a self-effacing pun, since grass was publishing slang for work of little value, and leaves are pages.)
21. The period between 1450 and 1600 in European development is known by what term, initially used by Italian scholars to express the rediscovery of ancient Roman and Greek culture? The Renaissance (literally meaning rebirth)
22. What is the main dog character called in Norton Juster's 1961 popular children's/adult-crossover book The Phantom Tollbooth? Tock
23. Who detailed his experiences before and during World War I in Memoirs of a Foxhunting Man, and Memoirs of an Infantry Officer? Siegfried Sassoon (1886-1967)
24. What significant law relating to literary and artistic works was first introduced in 1709? Copyright (prior to which creators had no legal means of protecting their work from being published or exploited by others)
25. Who wrote the 1891 book Also Sprach Zarathustra (Thus Spake Zarathustra)? Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)
26. What word, meaning 'measure' in Greek, refers to the rhythm of a line of verse? Metre (or meter)
27. Cheap literature of the 16-18th centuries was known as 'what' books, based on the old word for the travelling traders who sold them? Chapbooks (a chapman was a travelling salesman, from the earlier term cheapman)
28. What was Samuel Langhorne Clemens' pen-name? Mark Twain (1835-1910)
29. Derived from Greek meaning summit or finishing touch, what word refers to the publisher's logo and historically the publisher's details at the end of the book? Colophon
30. Japanese three-line verses called Haiku contain how many syllables? Seventeen
31. Stanley Kubrick successfully requested the UK ban of his own film based on what Anthony Burgess book? A Clockwork Orange
32. The ISBN (International Standard Book Number) code was increased to how many digits from 1 January 2007? Thirteen
33. The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis asserts that people's perceptions and attitudes are affected particularly by what: book covers, book price, or words and language? Words and language (the theory applies to all media and language, in that the type of words and language read and used affects how people react to the world)
34. What is the female term equating to a phallic symbol? Yonic symbol
35. James Carker is a villain in which Charles Dickens novel? Dombey and Son (serialised 1846-8)
36. What famous 1818 novel had the sub-title 'The Modern Prometheus'? Frankenstein (by Mary Shelley)
37. Who wrote the 1947 book The Fountainhead? Ayn Rand
38. By what name is the writer François-Marie Arouet (1694-1778) better known? Voltaire
39. Which pioneering American poet and story-teller wrote The Fall of the House of Usher? Edgar Allen Poe (1809-49)
40. According to Matthew 27 in the Bible what prisoner was released by Pontius Pilate instead of Jesus? Barabbas
41. What was the 1920s arts group centred around Leonard and Virginia Woolf and the district of London which provided the group's name? The Bloomsbury Group
42. What Japanese term (meaning 'fold' and 'book') refers to a book construction made using concertina fold, with writing/printing on one side of the paper? Orihon
43. What were the respective family names of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet? Montague and Capulet
44. Who wrote The Power of Positive Thinking in 1953? Norman Vincent Peale
45. Around 100AD what type of book construction began to replace scrolls? Codex (a series of folios sewn together)
46. What name for a lyrical work, typically 50-200 lines long, which from the Greek word for song? Ode
47. Who wrote the 1866 book Crime and Punishment? Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-81)
48. Who wrote the 1513 guide to leadership (titled in English) The Prince? Niccolo Machiavelli
49. William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey are commonly referred to as the 'what' Poets? Lake Poets (from around 1800 they lived close to each other in the Lake District of England)
50. In bookmaking, a sheet folded three times is called by what name? Octavo (creating eight leaves)
51. What is the parrot's name in Enid Blyton's 'Adventure' series of books? Kiki
52. Who wrote The French Lieutenant's Woman? John Fowles (1969)
53. What word, which in Greek means 'with' or 'after', prefixes many literary and language terms to denote something in a different position? Meta
54. "Reader, I married him," appears in the conclusion of what novel? Jane Eyre (by Charlotte Bronte, 1847)
55. Philosopher and writer Jeremy Bentham, 1748-1832, is associated with what school of thought? Utilitarianism (broadly Utilitarianism argues that society should be organised to produce the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people)
56. What influential American philosopher and author wrote the book 'Walden, or Life in the Woods'? Henry David Thoreau (1817-62)
57. The ancient Greek concept of the 'three unities' advocated that a literary work should use a single plotline, single location, and what other single aspect? Time (or real time)
58. Which statesman won the 1953 Nobel Prize for Literature? Sir Winston Churchill
59. Who is the second oldest of the Pevensie children in C S Lewis's The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe? Susan (bonus points: Peter is the oldest, Edmund is third and Lucy is youngest. The lion is Aslan. The first edition was published in 1950.)
60. Who wrote the plays Three Sisters, and The Cherry Orchard? Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860-1904)
61. What technical word is given usually to the left-side even-numbered page of a book? Verso
62. Which two writers fought a huge unsuccessful legal action in 2006-7 claiming that Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code had plaguarised their work? Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh
63. What is the pen-name of novelist Mary Ann Evans (1819-80)? George Eliot
64. What technical word is given usually to the right-side odd-numbered page of a book? Recto
65. In what decade was the Oxford English Dictionary first published? 1920s (1928)
66. What simple term, alternatively called Anglo-Saxon, refers to the English language which was used from the 5th century Germanic invasions, until (loosely) its fusion with Norman-French around 12-13th centuries? Old English
67. Who wrote Brighton Rock (1938) and Our Man in Havana (1958)? Graham Greene
68. Laurens van der Post's prisoner of war experiences, described in his books The Seed and the Sower (1963) and The Night of the New Moon (1970) inspired what film? Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence
69. With which troubled son are parents Laius and Jocasta associated? Oedipus (The mythical Greek character unknowingly killed his father King Laius and married his mother Jocasta. Sigmund Freud's term Oedipus Complex refers to similar feelings supposedly arising in male infant development.)
70. Which Russian writer was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1970? Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918-2008)
71. The book Eunoia, by Christian Bok, suggests in its title, and features exclusively what, in turn, in its first five chapters? The vowels a, e, i, o, u. (Each chapter contains words using only one vowel type. Bok says Eunoia means 'beautiful thinking'. Eunioa is otherwise a medical term based on the Greek meaning 'well mind'.)
72. Which great thinker collaborated with Sigmund Freud to write the 1933 book Why War? Albert Einstein
73. Legal action by J K Rowling and Warner Brothers commenced in 2007 against which company for its plans to publish a Harry Potter Lexicon? RDR Books
74. Who wrote the 1939 book The Big Sleep? Raymond Chandler
75. "In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice which I've been turning over in my mind ever since," is the start of which novel? The Great Gatsby (F Scott Fitzgerald, 1925)
76. In the early 1900s a thriller was instead more commonly referred to as what sort of book? Shocker (or shilling shocker)
77. Who wrote the books Les Miserables and The Hunchback of Notre-Dame? Victor Hugo
78. In what decade were ISBN numbers introduced to the UK? 1960s (1966)
79. In 1969, P H Newby's book Something to Answer For was the first winner of what prize? Booker Prize (the Man Booker Prize from 2002)
80. Who established Britain's first printing press in 1476? William Caxton
81. The word 'book' is suggested by some etymologists to derive from the ancient practice of writing on tablets made of what wood? Beech (Boc was an Old English word for beech wood)
82. What is the name of the first digital library founded by Michael Hart in 1971? Project Gutenberg
83. French writer Sully Prudhomme was the first winner of what prize in 1901? Nobel Prize for Literature
84. Who wrote Naked Lunch, (also titled The Naked Lunch)? William Burroughs (1959)
85. In Shakespeare's King Lear, which two daughters benefit initially from their father's rejection of the third daughter Cordelia? Goneril and Regan
86. What was Christopher Latham Scholes' significant invention of 1868? Typewriter
87. Which novel begins "It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife..."? Pride and Prejudice (by Jane Austen, 1813)
88. Japanese author and playwrite Yukio Mishima committed what extreme act in 1970 while campaigning for Japan to restore its nationalistic principles? Suicide
89. Which American philosopher, and often-quoted advocate of individualism, published essays on Self-Reliance, Love, Heroism, Character and Manners in his Collections of 1841 and 1844? Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-82)
90. Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye, printed in Bruges around 1475 is regarded as the first book to have been what? Printed in the English language (Caxton later printed Canterbury Tales in Westminster in 1476, which is regarded as the first book printed in the English language in England.)
91. In what city does Leo Tolstoy's novel War and Peace begin? Saint Petersburg (Petrograd and Leningrad are recent alternative and now obsolete names of this city - the quizmaster/mistress can decide if these answers are correct..)
92. Which French writer declined the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1964? Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980 - apparently he declined because he had an aversion to being 'institutionalised', although the real facts of the matter are elusive.)
93. What controversial novel begins: "[a person's name], light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, My soul," ? Lolita (by Vladimir Nabokov, 1955)
94. Jonathan Harker's Journal and Dr Seward's Diary feature in what famous 1897 novel? Dracula (by Bram Stoker)
95. What is the technical name for a fourteen-lined poem in rhymed iambic pentameters? Sonnet
96. "Make then laugh; make them cry; make them wait..." was a personal maxim of which novelist? Charles Dickens
97. What is the land of giants called in Gulliver's Travels? Brobdingnag
98. What prolific and highly regarded American author, who became a British subject a year before his death, wrote The Wings of the Dove; Washington Square, and the Golden Bowl? Henry James (1843-1916)
99. What term for a short, usually witty, poem or saying derives from the Greek words 'write' and 'on'? Epigram (epi = on, grapheine = write, which evolved into Latin and French to the modern English word)
100. What was the original title of the book on which the film Schindler's List was based? Schindler's Ark (by Thomas Keneally, which won the 1982 Booker Prize)