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 orfarcical (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 andRichard 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)

1 - Who was the author of the famous storybook 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland'?

a) Rudyard Kipling
b) John Keats
c) Lewis Carroll
d) H G Wells

The Correct Option is – c) Lewis Carroll

2 - How many lines does a sonnet have?

a) 10
b) 12
c) 14
d) They vary

The Correct option is – c) 14

3 - Who wrote 'Where ignorance is bliss, it is folly to be wise'?

a) Browning
b) Marx
c) Shakespeare
d) Kipling

The Correct option is – c) Shakespeare

4 - Name the book which opens with the line 'All children, except one grew up'?
a) The Railway Children
b) Winnie the Poo
c) Jungle book
d) Peter Pan
The Correct option is – d) Peter Pan

5 - Which is the first Harry Potter book?

a) HP and the Goblet of Fire
b) HP and the Philosopher’s Stone
c) HP and the Chamber of Secrets

The Correct options – b) HP and the Philosopher’s Stone

6- In which century were Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales written?

a) 14th
b) 15th
c) 16th
d) 17th

The Correct option is – 14th

7 - What nationality was Robert Louis Stevenson, writer of 'Treasure Island'?

a) Scottish
b) Welsh
c) Irish
d) French

The Correct option is – Scottish

8 - 'Jane Eyre' was written by which Bronte sister?

a) Anne
b) Charlotte
c) Emily

The Correct option is – Charlotte

9 - What is the book 'Lord of the Flies' about?

a) A round trip around the USA
b) A swarm of killer flies
c) Schoolboys on the desert island
The correct options is - Schoolboys on the desert island

10 - In the book' The Lord of the Rings', who or what is Bilbo?

a) Dwarf
b) Wizard
c) Hobbit
d) Troll

The Correct option is – Hobbit

11 - Who wrote the crime novel "Ten Little Niggers"?

a) Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
b) Irvine Welsh
c) Agatha Christie
d) Emile Zola

The Correct option is – c) Agatha Christie