Literary questions and answers for trivia quizzes and pub quizzes

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)
Literature is nothing but books and writings published on a particular subject and have lasting
importance. This Quiz gives you an ample of Questions and Answers on Literature in which we have
cater some names of books, autobiographies and writers which may be asked in various one exams like
SSC, State Services etc and also increase you knowledge about it.

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

Ans. C

2. Who wrote the famous 1855 poem The Charge of the Light Brigade?

A. Lord Alfred Tennyson

B. Christopher Marlowe

C. Johannes Gutenberg

D. René Descartes

Ans. A

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

A. Browning

B. Marx

C. Shakespeare

D. Kipling

Ans. C

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

Ans. D
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

D. HP and the God of small Things

Ans. B

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

A. 14th

B. 15th

C. 16th

D. 17th

Ans. A

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

A. Scottish

B. Welsh

C. Irish

D. French

Ans. A

More Quizzes on Famous Personality

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

A.  Anne

B. Charlotte

C. Emily

D. None of the above

Ans. B

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

D. None of the above

Ans. C

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

A. Dwarf

B. Wizard

C. Hobbit

D. Troll

Ans. C

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

A. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

B. Irvine Welsh

C. Agatha Christie

D. Emile Zola

Ans. C

12. Who wrote the famous book, "Who wants to be millionaire"?

A. Vikram Seth

B. Chetan Bhagat

C. Agatha Christie

D. D.Emile Zola

Ans. C

13. What is the other pen name of Munshi Premchand?

A. Nawab Rai

B. Dhanpat Das

C. Gopal Sharma

D. Prem Das

Ans. A

14. Who is the author of the book 'Shadow Lines'?

A. Vikram Seth

B. R. K. Narayan
C. Amitav Gosh

D. Rohington Mistry

Ans. C

More Quizzes on our Indian Literature

15. Who wrote the famous novel 'Anandmath'?

A. Rabindranath Tagore

B. Bankim Chandra Chatterjee

C. Sarat Chandra Chatterjee

D. None of the above

Ans. B

16. The Autography of an Unknown Indian' is written by:

A. Vikram Seth

B. V.S. Naipaul

C. Nirad C. Chaudhury

D. None of the above

Ans. C

17. The Argumentative Indian is written by:

A. V.S. Naipaul

B. Rohington Mistry

C. Prof. Amartya Sen

D. Amitav Gosh

Ans. C

18. Whose autobiography is known as 'The Story of My Experiments with Truth'?

A. Pandit Nehru

B. M. K. Gandhi

C. J. C. Bose

D. None of the above

Ans. B
19. Who wrote the book, “One night at Call Centre"

A. Rohington Mistry

B. Salman Rushdie

C. Chetan Bhagat

D. Vikram Seth

Ans. B

20. For which of the following books, Salmaan Rushdie won the Booker Prize?

A. Satanic Verses

B. Midnight's Children

C. Fury

D. Shalimaar the Clown

Ans. B