Literature In English

Question 1

This “Lonesome Dove” author dedicated his novel “The Desert Rose” “to Lesley, for the use of her goat”

Answer 1

Larry McMurty

Question 2

Her novels The Paris Apartment (2022) and The Guest List (2020) are New York Times best sellers.

Answer 2

Lucy Foley

Question 3

A 20th century Nigerian writer whose works include “Things Fall Apart” (1958) and “Arrow of God” (1964)

Answer 3

Chinua Achebe

his novels focus on the clash between traditional, African values and culture, and the encroachment of colonialism and westernization

Question 4

In 1965, this Indianapolis-born novelist published “God Bless you, Mr. Rosewater”

Answer 4

Vonnegut

Question 5

This 20th century American writer and critic was posthumously awarded a 1958 Pulitzer Prize for “A Death in the Family”, his only novel

Answer 5

James Agee (AYjee)

He was best known for his classic “Let us now Praise Famous Men”, with photos by Walker Evans, an account of sharecroppers in Alabama during the 1930s. 

Question 6

A 19th century American author known for his many books in which poor boys become rich through their earnest attitudes and hard work

Answer 6

Horatio Alger Junior

A true story of spectacular worldly success achieved by someone who started near the bottom is often called a “Horatio Alger story ”

Question 7

“LOVE” IS WITHIN THE TITLES OF 3 OF HIS MOST FAMOUS BOOKS; A FOURTH, “THE RAINBOW”, CALLS LOVE “THE FLOWER OF LIFE”

Answer 7

D. H. Lawrence

A 20th century British author. Two of his best regarded works are Sons and Lovers and Women in Love Lawrence is known for his frank treatment of sex and for the racial ideas on society and the family that he voiced in his books

His novel Lady Chatterly’s Lover was banned of obscene in both Britain and the United States. In the United States, the band was appealed to the Supreme Court, which it overruled. 

Question 8

All the world’s a stage is the beginning of a speech in this play

Answer 8

As You Like It by William Shakespeare

The monologue is also called “The Seven Ages of Man” because it treats that many periods in a man’s life: his years as an infant, schoolboy, lover, soldier, judge, foolish old man, and finally “second childishness and near oblivion”

Most of the action of the play takes place in the forest of Arden, to which several members of the Duke’s Court have been banished 

Question 9

This writer read her poem “On the Pulse of the Morning” at Bill Clinton’s 1993 inaugural ceremony 

Answer 9

Maya Angelou

She was a 20th century African-American writer, whose best known work is I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings an autobiographical account of growing up as a black girl in the rural south 

Question 10

In Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar who says the speech that begins “friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears”?

Answer 10

Mark Antony

The speak addresses the crowd at Caesar’s funeral, in it he repeats several times the words “Brutus is an honorable man“. The speech is Anthony’s funeral oration over Caesar, who Brutus has helped killed. “Brutus is an honorable man” is ironic, as Antony is attempting to portray Brutus as ungrateful and treacherous. He succeeded in turning the Roman people against Brutus and the other assassins 

Question 11

This Welsh poets’s “Fern Hill” says, “Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs… and happy as the grass was green”

Answer 11

Dylan Thomas

Question 12

Category: American Plays

THIS DRAMA IS SET AT A SUMMER HOME IN AUGUST 1912; ACT 1 TAKES PLACE AT 8:30 A.M.; ACT 4 IS 15 1/2 HOURS LATER, AT MIDNIGHT

Answer 12

Long Day’s Journey into Night

By. Eugene O’Neill

Long Day’s Journey into Night is a play in four acts written by American playwright Eugene O’Neill in 1939–1941 and first published posthumously in 1956.

Question 13

The youngest of Alcott’s March sisters

Answer 13

Amy

Meg, the oldest, beautiful and rather vain, but sweet; Jo the main focus of the books, a spirited tomboy; Beth, a sickly, gentle musician who dies in the first novel; and Amy, pampered and artistic 

Question 14

A friend of Shakespeare, this “Song: to Celia“ poet and playwright was buried standing up in Westminster Abbey 

Answer 14

Ben Jonson

Question 15

The biography “Two Lives”, about Gertrude Stein and this partner investigates how they survived Nazi Europe

Answer 15

Alice B. Tolkas

Question 16

She wrote “The Hunger Games” and also co-wrote the screenplay for the movie based on it

Answer 16

Suzanne Collins

Question 17

He wrote “A Confederacy of Dunces”

Answer 17

John Kennedy Toole

Question 18

Irishman Yeats wrote a poem entitled this holiday “1916”

Answer 18

Easter

It commemorates the martyrs of the Easter Rising, an insurrection against the British government in Ireland in 1916, which resulted in the execution of several Irish nationalists whom Yeats knew personally.

Question 19

In a classic of American fiction, these 2 boys get a $6,000 reward each after finding money that Injun Joe hid in a cave

Answer 19

Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer

Question 20

20th century, British-American writer and critic whose works include collections “The Double Man“ and “The Dyer’s Hand“. He is best known for his poetry, which was influenced by his experiences in the Spanish Civil War and Christianity

Answer 20

W.H. Auden

Born: February 21, 1907, York, United Kingdom

The Spanish Civil War was fought in the late 1930s in Spain. 

Question 21

Having spent most of the first 40 years of her life in China, this author was the first American woman to win both a Pulitzer Prize and a Nobel Prize

Answer 21

Pearl S. Buck

Question 22

Winston Groom’s novel about a not so smart guy became this Oscar winning 1994 film

Answer 22

Forrest Gump

Question 23

Who wrote the 1922 novel Babbitt?

Answer 23

Sinclair Lewis

The title character, an American real estate agent in a small city, is portrayed as a crass, loud, over optimistic boot who only thinks about money and speaks in cliché such as “you’ve gotta have pep, by golly!“

By extension a “Babbit” is a narrow minded, materialistic businessman 

Question 24

A twentieth-century African American author. His writings, mostly about the black experience in the United States, include NOVELS, such as Go Tell It on the Mountain, and ESSAYS, such as “The Fire Next Time.”

Answer 24

James Baldwin

Go Tell It on the Mountain is a 1953 semi-autobiographical novel by James Baldwin. It tells the story of John Grimes, an intelligent teenager in 1930s Harlem, and his relationship with his family and his church.

Question 25

On holiday in Jamaica, this Terry McMillan title heroine goes gaga over a much younger man

Answer 25

Stella

How Stella Got Her Groove Back
Published 1996. Movie in 1998.

Question 26

Category: B F Q

A standard American reference work for quotations from literature and speech

Answer 26

Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations

Originally published in 1855 by John Bartlett 

Question 27

An English author and artist of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. An early leader of romanticism, he is best known for his collections of poems. “Songs of Innocence” and “Songs of Experience”.

Answer 27

William Blake

Blake illustrated printed and distributed all of his books himself 

Question 28

An eighteenth century Scottish author, best known for his “Life of Samuel Johnson”

Answer 28

James Boswell

Boswell became a general term for a biographer: “James Joyce found his Boswell in Richard Ellmann”

Question 29

19th century English poet, best known for Sonnets from the Portuguese. The most famous of these sonnets begins “how do I love thee? Let me count the ways”

Answer 29

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Wife of Robert Browning 

Robert Brownings many poems include “the Pied Piper of Hamelin“ and “My Last Duchess“

Question 30

The central character in James Fenimore Cooper’s The Leatherstocking Tales , such as “The Last of the Mohicans”, where he is called Hawkeye.

Answer 30

Natty Bumppo

Natty, a settler, is taught by the native Americans and adopts their way of life 

“The Last of the Mohicans” (1826)- the leading character is Uncas, a noble native American, who helps a British family of settlers during the French and Indian war 

Question 31

Which 18th century poet recorded the words to “Auld Lang Syne” (the words had been passed down orally)

Answer 31

Robert Burns

Auld Lang Syne is a traditional Scottish song, customarily sung on New Year’s Eve; the title means “Long Time Past.” The song begins:
Should auld (old) acquaintance be forgot
And never brought to min’?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot, and auld lang syne?

Question 32

American writer of “hard-boiled” crime drama and political activist best known for The Maltese Falcon, The Thin Man and Red Harvest.

Answer 32

Dashiell Hammett

Question 33

New York Times bestselling author of thrillers including The Good Girl, The Other Mrs., Local Woman Missing and Just the Nicest Couple

Answer 33

Mary Kubica

Question 34

19th century English poet who was a leader of romanticism and whose best known work is Don Juan, a long poem of satire

Answer 34

Lord George Gordon Byron

A Byronic hero is a kind of hero found in several of the works of Lord Byron. Like Byron, a Byronic hero is a melancholy and rebellious young man, distressed by a terrible wrong he committed in the past

Question 35

Joseph Conrad: “Lord _____”

Answer 35

Jim

Question 36

Pen name of Charles Ludwig Dawson,

Answer 36

Lewis Carroll

a 19th century, writer, scholar, and photographer best known for Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass

Through the Looking Glass (1872) is the sequel to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. In it, Alice passes through a mirror over a fireplace and finds herself once more in an enchanted land, where she meets Tweedledum and Tweedledee, the White Knight, Humpty Dumpty and other amazing creatures.

Question 37

20th century American writer known for his hard-boiled mysteries featuring private detective Philip Marlowe, whose adventures chronicle the seamy underside of Southern California

Answer 37

Raymond Chandler

Many of his works, including The Big Sleep and Farewell, My lovely have been adapted into films

Question 38

Who wrote the 1797 evocative poem “Kubla Khan” about an exotic emperor

Answer 38

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

It begins with “In Xanadu did Kubla Khan/ A stately pleasure-dome decree…”

Coleridge was a leader of Romanticism. He also wrote the poem “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”

Question 39

“Come live with me and be my love” is the opening line of “The Passionate Shepard to His Love” by this English playwright, poet, and translator of the Elizabethan era

Answer 39

Christopher Marlowe

Question 40

Shakespeare:

The youngest of King Lear’s three daughters

Answer 40

Cordelia

King Lear at first thinks her ungrateful to him because she refuses to flatter him as her sisters do; he soon finds out that she is the only one of the three who genuinely cares for him

King Lear is a tragedy about an old king who unwisely hands his kingdom over to two of his daughters. The daughters, who had flattered him while he was in power, turn on him; their actions reduce him to poverty and eventually to madness. Cordelia remains faithful to him 

Question 41

Who wrote the poem, “There is no Frigate like a Book”

Answer 41

Emily Dickinson

She was a nineteenth century poet know. For short evocative poems. Some of her other best known poems begin “Because I could not stop for Death/ He kindly stopped me” and “I’m nobody! Who are you?”

Question 42

Author of memoir “Out of Africa” about the time from 1914 to 1931 that she lived on a coffee plantation in what is now Kenya

Answer 42

Isak Dinesen

Nom de plume of Danish writer Baroness Karen Blixen. The book was the basis for the 1985 movie of the same name

Question 43

“death, be not proud”, “no man is an island”, and “for whom the bell tolls” are expressions drawn from this 17th century English poet and clergyman

Answer 43

John Donne

Was famous for his intricate metaphors, as in the poem he compares two lovers to the two legs of a drawing compass

Question 44

Wrote The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Answer 44

Robert Louis Stevenson

A 19th century Scottish author. He spent the last few years of his life as a planter and storyteller on Samoa in the south Pacific Ocean. His other works include Treasure Island, and a Child’ Garden of Verses. 

Question 45

A 20th century American author best known for the three novels that make up U.S.A., a complex and technically innovative portrait of the United States, in which the country itself acts as a protagonist.

Answer 45

John Dos Passos

Question 46

In this epic poem about leaving heaven, John Milton created Pandemonium, the capital of Hell

Answer 46

Paradise Lost

Question 47

Author of the popular 1751 poem “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard”. It contains the lines “Full many a flower is born to blush unseen/ and waste its sweetness on the desert air,” and “the paths of glory lead but to the grave”

Answer 47

Thomas Gray

Another line is and “far from the madding crowd’s ignoble strife/ Their sober wishes never learned to stray,”

Question 48

she received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993, becoming the first Black female writer in history to be honored with the prize.

Answer 48

Toni Morrison