Literature Trivia Questions
Total Questions: 388
Who is the Jazz Age author and his wife featured in one of Tennessee Williams' last plays, 'Clothes for a Summer Hotel'?
Medium
Click to reveal answer
f. scott fitzgerald
Which author wrote 'Breakfast at Tiffany's' and is often confused with Kurt Vonnegut, who wrote 'Breakfast of Champions'?
Medium
Click to reveal answer
truman capote
Which author won a Pulitzer Prize for 'So Big' and found further acclaim decades later with 'Giant'?
Medium
Click to reveal answer
edna ferber
Who is the Scotsman who originally titled 'A Child's Garden of Verses' as 'Penny Whistles'?
Medium
Click to reveal answer
robert louis stevenson
Which name, originally a nickname for 'Adelaide', was made famous by a novel by Johanna Spyri?
Medium
Click to reveal answer
heidi
What is the name of the inn in the title of Daphne du Maurier's 1936 novel?
Medium
Click to reveal answer
jamaica inn
Which author's 1985 bestseller with a short title is 'Lucky'?
Medium
Click to reveal answer
jackie collins
What is the name of the Eugene O'Neill play about a black ex-con who becomes the ruler of a West Indian island?
Medium
Click to reveal answer
emperor jones
Which fictional character climbs down his castle wall face down with his cloak spread out like wings, astonishing Jonathan Harker?
Medium
Click to reveal answer
dracula
Which author wrote the novel in which Annie Wilkes tortures Paul Sheldon for killing off the character Misery Chastain?
Medium
Click to reveal answer
stephen king
What is the married name under which Edith Newbold Jones published 'The House of Mirth'?
Medium
Click to reveal answer
edith wharton
Which author wrote the line, 'A salesman is got to dream, boy. It comes with the territory'?
Medium
Click to reveal answer
arthur miller
Which author created the character Henry Fleming, who reappears in the short story 'Lynx-Hunting'?
Medium
Click to reveal answer
stephen crane
Which American author began her career as a poet before gaining fame for her novel 'Fear of Flying'?
Medium
Click to reveal answer
erica jong
Which writer's great-grandfather, who inspired the character John Sartoris, wrote 'The White Rose Of Memphis'?
Medium
Click to reveal answer
william faulkner
Who tests Odysseus on details of their bed to confirm his identity when he returns in The Odyssey?
Medium
Click to reveal answer
penelope
Which British author wrote the lines, 'The time has come,' the walrus said, 'to talk of many things...?'
Medium
Click to reveal answer
lewis carroll
Which author, known for writing '1984', was born in 1903 in Motihari, Bengal, India?
Medium
Click to reveal answer
george orwell
In which novel by Charlotte Bronte is Edward Rochester the moody master of Thornfield Hall?
Medium
Click to reveal answer
jane eyre
Which English author created the characters Peter Rabbit, Benjamin Bunny, and the Flopsey Bunnies?
Medium
Click to reveal answer
beatrix potter
Which author wrote about the horse-like Houyhnhnms who keep the man-like Yahoos as beasts of burden?
Medium
Click to reveal answer
jonathan swift
Which author dedicated his book 'Firestarter' to Shirley Jackson, the writer of 'The Haunting of Hill House'?
Medium
Click to reveal answer
stephen king
How does Juliet kill herself in the play Romeo and Juliet?
Medium
Click to reveal answer
dagger
Who is the author of the book titled 'Omoo', which has the subtitle 'Adventures in the South Seas'?
Medium
Click to reveal answer
herman melville
Which author first published the novel 'The Stand' in 1978 and released an uncut version in 1990?
Medium
Click to reveal answer
stephen king
Which author created the characters Frederic Henry, Jake Barnes, and Francis Macomber?
Medium
Click to reveal answer
ernest hemingway
In which Shakespeare play does the character Fortinbras speak the final line, 'Go, bid the soldiers shoot'?
Medium
Click to reveal answer
hamlet
Who is the character whose daughter Jessica elopes with Lorenzo in 'The Merchant of Venice'?
Medium
Click to reveal answer
shylock
In a famous story, what is Philip Nolan 'The Man Without'?
Medium
Click to reveal answer
country
Which author wrote the novel that was adapted into the 1928 play starring Katharine Cornell, titled 'The Age of Innocence'?
Medium
Click to reveal answer
edith wharton
Which author referred to London as 'that great cesspool' in 'A Study in Scarlet'?
Medium
Click to reveal answer
arthur conan doyle
Which author derived the title 'The Sound and the Fury' from Shakespeare's 'Macbeth'?
Medium
Click to reveal answer
william faulkner
Which author wrote the 1929 novel 'Dodsworth', which tells of an auto manufacturer in Zenith who retires and goes to Europe?
Medium
Click to reveal answer
sinclair lewis
Which playwright is the subject of the one-man show 'Confessions of a Nightingale'?
Medium
Click to reveal answer
tennessee williams
In which Jerzy Kosinski novel is an idiotic gardener named Chance propelled to fame?
Medium
Click to reveal answer
being there
Which 1848 book ends with the phrase 'Workers of the world, unite!'?
Medium
Click to reveal answer
communist manifesto
Which author transitioned from writing about vampires to an ancient Babylonian spirit in 'Servant of the Bones'?
Medium
Click to reveal answer
anne rice
To which Indian tribe do Tony Hillerman's detectives Jim Chee & Joe Leaphorn belong?
Medium
Click to reveal answer
navajo
Which author wrote 'Across the River and Into The Trees'?
Medium
Click to reveal answer
ernest hemingway
What Danish author wrote the 1855 autobiography titled "The Fairy Tale of My Life"?
Medium
Click to reveal answer
hans christian andersen
Which author, known for writing 'On the Road,' suggested the title 'Howl' for Allen Ginsberg's poem?
Medium
Click to reveal answer
jack kerouac
What 1976 bestseller sparked a significant interest in genealogy, particularly among African Americans?
Medium
Click to reveal answer
roots
Which 1975 E.L. Doctorow novel tells the story of Coalhouse Walker Jr., who is harassed by local firemen?
Medium
Click to reveal answer
ragtime
In which European capital is the story of an American writer set in Henry Miller's 'Tropic of Cancer'?
Medium
Click to reveal answer
paris
Who supplemented his income in his 30s by teaching at the Pinkerton Academy in Derry, New Hampshire?
Medium
Click to reveal answer
robert frost
In which novel does an old seaman sing, 'Fifteen men on the dead man's chest--yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum'?
Medium
Click to reveal answer
treasure island
Who authored the best-selling book 'Kids Say The Darndest Things!' that topped the charts in 1957 and 1958?
Medium
Click to reveal answer
art linkletter
In what capacity did Ernest H. Shepard contribute to the original Pooh books?
Medium
Click to reveal answer
illustrator
Who is the hero of the historical novel 'The Green Mountain Boys'?
Medium
Click to reveal answer
ethan allen
Who is rumored to be the illegitimate father of Guy de Maupassant, known for writing 'Madame Bovary'?
Medium
Click to reveal answer
gustave flaubert
Which author, known for his work 'Kim,' set his children's book 'Rewards and Fairies' in Sussex, where he lived?
Medium
Click to reveal answer
rudyard kipling
Who is the limerick poet who published 'Laughable Lyrics', his last book of nonsense poems, in 1877?
Medium
Click to reveal answer
edward lear
Which Sinclair Lewis title character becomes involved with a fellow religious hypocrite named Sharon Falconer?
Medium
Click to reveal answer
elmer gantry
What is the pen name of the author Charles Lutwidge Dodgson?
Medium
Click to reveal answer
lewis carroll
Which author did John Updike describe as having written 'an indubitable masterpiece' with their work 'The Metamorphosis'?
Medium
Click to reveal answer
franz kafka
In Scene I of which Shakespearean play does the title monarch announce the division of his kingdom into three parts?
Medium
Click to reveal answer
king lear
Who is the author referred to as 'The Devil at Large' in Erica Jong's book about him?
Medium
Click to reveal answer
henry miller
What was Yeats's middle name?
Medium
Click to reveal answer
butler
Which Danish author wrote the lesser-known fairy tale 'The Little Green Ones' about tree lice?
Medium
Click to reveal answer
hans christian andersen
What event did Bierce define in 'The Devil's Dictionary' as 'The first and direst of all disasters,' which occurred for him on June 24, 1842?
Medium
Click to reveal answer
birth