Author Int. Info

Question 0

Updike

Answer 0

Valedictorian as child; worked for the New Yorker; appeared in Time Magazine

Question 1

Plato

Answer 1

Taught by Socrates; founded the Academy at Athens; taught Aristotle; aka Aristocles

Question 2

Orwell

Answer 2

Real name Eric Arthur Blair; born in India; joined India Imperial Police; fought in Spanish Civil War

Question 3

Shapiro

Answer 3

Won a Pulitzer Prize for V-Letter; served in WWII

Question 4

Yevtushenko

Answer 4

Met Robert frost; honorary member if American Academy of Arts and Sciences

Question 5

Cervantes

Answer 5

Unknown if he had a formal education; joined Spanish Army; captured by pirates; arrested for bankruptcy

Question 6

Arnold

Answer 6

Worried about reforms; went to Oxford; school inspector;

Question 7

Hughes

Answer 7

Figure in the Harlem Renaissance; won in the Opportunity Magazine with his poem the Weary Blues; architect of black poetry

Question 8

Nash

Answer 8

Teacher; mocks politics

Question 9

Thurber

Answer 9

Pierced in his eye by an arrow as a child; developed rich fantasy life; worked for Chicago Tribune; met Harold Ross and E.B. White

Question 10

Housman

Answer 10

Fell in love w/ roommate at college; studied Greek and Roman classics

Question 11

Pirandello

Answer 11

Wealthy as a child; wife went crazy and daughter tried to commit suicide; gave his Nobel prize to the gov’t to melt; maybe friends with Mussolini

Question 12

Robinson

Answer 12

Named by a raffle; his love rejected him 2x; respected by Roosevelt

Question 13

Cortazar

Answer 13

Master of short stories; sick child often, gave him time to write; became a teacher; received Medic’s Prize; barefoot imprisoned after protesting against Peron

Question 14

Sophocles

Answer 14

Good education; elected as military leader twice; dramatic competitions, won several of them

Question 15

Shelley

Answer 15

Expelled from college for being an atheist; travelled and eventually married Mary; drowned while sailing

Question 16

Graves

Answer 16

Love mountain climbing and boxing; injured in WWI; Queen’s Gold Medal of Poetry

Question 17

Carlyle

Answer 17

Stomach ailment; short tempered; his work The French Revolution was burned

Question 18

Brooks

Answer 18

Experienced racial prejudice; met Langston Hughes; held poetry contest in prisons; poet Laureate of Illinois

Question 19

Frost

Answer 19

Interested with the natural world; valedictorians with wife as children; father died of tuberculosis when Frost was young; recited poems at JFK’s inauguration

Question 20

Flaubert

Answer 20

Unstable in school; had epilepsy

Question 21

Crane

Answer 21

Credited with beginning modern naturalism; attended military boarding school; reporter in war

Question 22

Hopkins

Answer 22

Priest as a middle aged man