Set 1: Literature Trivia Flashcards
(131 cards)
1
Q
Complete the line. “If music be the food of love…”
A
What is “play on”?
2
Q
Hamlet’s closest friend, only major character left alive at play’s end
A
Who is Horatio?
3
Q
Pasternak’s Moscow medic
A
Question: Who is Dr. Zhivago?
4
Q
Long-time companion of Dashiell Hammett, she was played in “Julia” by Jane Fonda
A
Who is Lillian Hellman?
5
Q
Sophocles’ “complex tragedy”
A
What is Oedipus Rex?
6
Q
Its sequels were “Men against the Sea” & “Pitcairn’s Island”
A
What is Mutiny on the Bounty?
7
Q
Play in which Queen Gertrude, while watching a play, says, “The lady doth protest too much”
A
What is Hamlet?
8
Q
Sport defined by Hemingway as “Death in the Afternoon”
A
What is bullfighting?
9
Q
Her Giant grew into an epic movie
A
Who is Edna Ferber?
10
Q
He wrote “There was a little girl, she had a little curl” & “The Wreck of the Hesperus”, too
A
Who is Henry Wadsworth
11
Q
Originally in Dutch, Het Achterhus, this Diary of a Young Girl is best known by its play title
A
What is The Diary of Anne Frank?
12
Q
After pulling several “rabbits” from his hat, he made The Witches of Eastwick materialize
A
Who is John Updike?
13
Q
Language in which Browning’s Sonnets from the Portuguese was originally written
A
What is English?
14
Q
“Under a spreading chestnut tree” it stands
A
What is the village smithy?
15
Q
“Dusk—of a summer night” is the first paragraph of his An American Tragedy
A
Question: Who is Theodore Dreiser?
16
Q
Shakespeare comedy subtitled “Or, What You Will”
A
What is Twelfth Night?
17
Q
1st name of Defoe’s bawdy heroine, or a gangster’s girlfriend
A
What is Moll?
18
Q
Mrs. Hamilton, Mrs. Kennedy, & Mrs. Butler, but never Mrs. Wilkes
A
Who is Scarlett O’Hara?
19
Q
Hans Brinker’s were silver
A
What are ice skates?
20
Q
Enid Bagnold’s book that became Liz Taylor’s 1st starring vehicle
A
What is National Velvet?
21
Q
Vowel missing from entire 50,000 word text of Ernest Wright’s “Gadsby”
A
What is E?
22
Q
In “Trees”, he claimed that “poems are made by fools like me”
A
Who is Joyce Kilmer?
23
Q
Time when the raven came rapping
A
What is midnight?
24
Q
Dramatic form, from Greek for “merrymaking”
A
What is comedy?
25
19th century Norwegian playwright often called founder of modern drama
Who is Henrik Isben?
26
As he wished, the last play of Eugene O’Neill was produced after his death
Question: What is Long Day’s Journey Into Night?
27
Unknown author of the story of Aladdin
Who is Anonymous? (Alex: “A bit of trick. We threw you a curve there, gang. Sorry
28
In this book, Nick Charles’ Asta is a schnauzer, but in films was played by a wire-haired terrier
Question: What is The Thin Man?
29
Garryowen is the “bloody mangy mongrel” in the “Cylops” episode of this James Joyce novel
What is Ulysses?
30
A gravedigger hands Hamlet this person’s skull
Who is Yorick?
31
He wrote biographies of Columbus & Washington as well as Rip Van Winkle
Who is Washington Irving?
32
Tutored by Ralph Waldo Emerson & Henry David Thoreau, her works include “Jo’s Boys”
Who is Louisa May Alcott?
33
Best-selling book of both ’72 & ’73 was this Richard Bach bird
What is Jonathan Livingston Seagull?
34
J. Onassis was supervising editor for his autobiography, which should prove a “Thriller”
Who is Michael Jackson?
35
Sandburg wrote, “The fog comes on” these, but Brautigan said no, cats do, Carl
What are little cat feet?
36
Expression “The glory that was Greece & the grandeur that was Rome” is by this gloomy poet
Question: Who is Edgar Allan Poe?
37
Queequeg’s occupation in “Moby Dick”
What is a harpooner?
38
It begins, “Marley was dead to begin with”
What is A Christmas Carol?
39
As “Isak Dinesen”, Danish baroness Karen Blixen wrote about this continent she chose as her 2nd home
What is Africa?
40
Melville title sailor who personifies innocence
Who is Billy Budd?
41
James Hilton’s schoolmaster father was the model for this novel’s title character
Who is Mr. Chips?
42
John Steinbeck wrote the preface of a book about this Al Capp character
Who is Li’l Abner?
43
Ironically Catherine, wife of this poet, painter, & printer, was illiterate
Who is William Blake?
44
Coleridge character who cries, “Water, water, everywhere, nor any drop to drink”
Who is The Ancient Mariner?
45
The decadent Snopes clan were featured in this author’s The Hamlet, The Town, & The Mansion
Who is William Faulkner?
46
At the N.Y. customs house, Oscar Wilde asserted he had nothing to declare but this
What is his genius?
47
Captain Nemo “dies” in both these Jules Verne novels
Question: What are Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea and The Mysterious Island?
48
The Mock Turtle said its 4 branches were “ambition, distraction, uglification, & derision”
What is arithmetic?
49
It’s said he turned down Pulitzer for Arrowsmith because he felt he was due one sooner
Who is Sinclair Lewis?
50
In 1895, this 67-year-old count learned to ride the bicycle he received from Moscow admirers
Question: Who is Leo Tolstoy?
51
Of Franny & Zooey & Daphnis & Chloe, the 2 heroines
Who are Franny and Chloe?
52
Famed for taking it off, her writing career took off with The G-String Murders
Who is Gypsy Rose Lee?
53
Frances H. Burnett based this “little” hero in long curls, velvet & lace on her own son, Vivian
Who is Little Lord Fauntleroy?
54
In 1976, Publishers Weekly initiated a best seller list for these
What are paperbacks?
55
King of Scotland at the start of Macbeth
Who is Duncan?
56
The travelers in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales are on a pilgrimage to shrine of this 12th c. martyr
Who is Thomas à Becket?
57
Probably the 19th c.’s largest single royalty check went to this president’s widow in 1886 for his Memoirs
Question: Who is Ulysses S. Grant? (Alex: $200,000 check and it was through the good graces of Mark Twain by the way was the publisher.)
58
Ben Jonson told Celia, “Drink to me only with thine eyes, & I will” do this
What is “pledge with mine”?
59
Author of A Heap o’ Livin’, listed in Avenel’s companion to American Literature as “Famous Bad Poet”
Who is Edgar Guest?
60
To “amuse” his mother, he hid in his pockets bats which he’d found in a Hannibal cave
Who is Mark Twain?
61
Perhaps Edgar Allan Poe’s flair for the dramatic came from this, his birth parents’ occupation
What is acting?
62
What you’ll be if you accomplish all the ifs in Rudyard Kipling’s If, my son
What is a man?
63
In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, this was Tom Snout’s occupation tho you may not give a “dam”
What is tinker?
64
Turgenev novel that dealt with confrontation between 2 generations & popularized the word “nihilist”
What is Fathers and Sons?
65
Czech writer who wrote in German, his life, like his novels, was a constant “Trial”
Who is Franz Kafka?
66
“I know for a fact there is life after death,” said this author of On Death & Dying
Who is Elisabeth Kübler-Ross?
67
Once nearly blind from an infection as a teenager, this Englishman wrote Eyeless in Gaza in 1936
Who is Aldous Huxley?
68
Author of The Third Man, Robert Louis Stevenson was his 1st cousin once removed
Who is Graham Greene?
69
She told her father “I love your majesty according to my bond, no more nor less”
Question: Who is Cordelia?
70
In 1986, his second posthumous novel, The Garden of Eden, was published 25 years after his death
Who is Ernest Hemingway?
71
His pen name is Russian for “bitter”; his depressing plays include The Lower Depths
Who is Maxim Gorky?
72
Peter Shaffer called this long time best seller “a tribal record…full of rape, incest & murder”
What is The Bible?
73
This “Little Chickadee” got thrown in jail for Sex, a 1926 play she not only starred in, but wrote
Who is Mae West?
74
Feminist author of The Female Eunuch, she married 1 of Cosmopolitan’s 1st nude male centerfolds
Who is Germaine Greer?
75
The only two Italian cities mentioned in [Shakespeare’s] titles, they both begin with “V”
What are Verona and Venice?
76
Of this India-born writer, Mark Twain said, “He knows all that can be known, & I know the rest”
Question: Who is Rudyard Kipling?
77
The 42nd Parallel, 1919, and The Big Money comprised this John Dos Passos trilogy
What is U.S.A.?
78
Of Lady Macbeth’s 165 words in her sleepwalking scene, all but 20 have this number of syllables
What is one?
79
Name by which Eva St. Clare is better known in Uncle Tom’s Cabin
What is Little Eva?
80
Margaret Sanger dedicated her book on birth control to this relative who had had 11 children
Who is her mother?
81
Her only non-fiction work was Every Night, Josephine! describing her French poodle’s lifestyle
Who is Jacqueline Susann?
82
Her 1949 tale, “The Lottery”, didn’t feature a pick 6 for cash, but a pick 1 for stoning
Who is Shirley Jackson?
83
Title shared by novels of H.G. Wells & Ralph Ellison, though H.G. added a “The”
What is Invisible Man?
84
The darkest time of this British author’s youth was his job of pasting labels on pots of stove blacking
Who is Charles Dickens?
85
In Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, Hester Prynne did her sinning in this Puritan city
What is Boston?
86
Tom Sawyer & Huck Finn’s hometown, St. Petersburg, was based on this Missouri city
Question: What is Hannibal?
87
Set in the Outback, this novel opens “On December 8, 1915, Meggie Cleary had her 4th birthday”
What is The Thorn Birds?
88
In his novel Falconer, Falconer is a prison
Who is John Cheever?
89
His 19th century novels such as The Mysterious Island foretold the submarine, the aqua lung & TV
Who is Jules Verne?
90
Born Amandine Aurore Lucile Dupin, she chose this pseudonym for her 1st novel, 1832’s Indiana
Who is George Sand?
91
In the Dostoevsky novel, one was a writer, one a student at a monastery & one didn’t work at all
Who are the Brothers Karamazov?
92
Seeking to end Peloponnesian War, Aristophanes wrote this comedy about a sex strike
What is Lysistrata?
93
Thomas Wolfe was born in 1900 & entered the University of this, his native state, at age 15
What is North Carolina?
94
His 1st book of stories appeared in 1904, 3 years after he finished serving time for embezzling
Who is O. Henry?
95
In The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, this is Abraham Van Brunt’s nickname
What is Brom Bones?
96
The expression “to grow like topsy” comes from this 1852 novel
What is Uncle Tom’s Cabin?
97
The Italian type of this 14-line poem is also known as the Petrarchan
What is a sonnet?
98
Famous price of the novels written by Ned Buntline
What is a dime?
99
Time magazine called this Working author “the tape recorder’s best friend”
Who is Studs Terkel?
100
The sails of her barge were “so perfumed that the winds were love-sick with them”
Who is Cleopatra?
101
She called herself "the daughter of two persons of distinguished literary celebrity" in an introduction to one of her novels
Who is Mary Shelley
102
This Spielberg Holocaust film was based on a book by Thomas Keneally.
What is Schindler's List?
103
A novel by Chuck Palahniuk was the basis for this film starring Brad Pitt & Edward Norton.
What is Fight Club?
104
She stars as literary forger Lee Israel in “Can You Ever Forgive Me?”, based on the memoir of the same name.
Who is Melissa McCarthy?
105
This film with Ray Liotta & Joe Pesci was based on the book “Wiseguy: Life in a Mafia Family”
What is Goodfellas?
106
Emma Stone played aspiring writer Skeeter Phelan in this ’60s-set film based on the novel of the same name
What is The Help?
107
1944’s “Absent in the Spring” is one of the non-mystery novels she wrote under the name Mary Westmacott
Who is Agatha Christie?
108
On Ursula Le Guin’s passing, George R.R. Martin called her one of the great writers of these paired genres of the past century
What are science fiction and fantasy?
109
It’s the first name shared by bestselling authors Delinsky, Tuchman & Kingsolver
What is Barbara?
110
During the Harlem Renaissance, she wrote “Their Eyes Were Watching God”
Who is Zora Neale Hurston?
111
At 15 she wrote a satirical “History of England” by “a partial, prejudiced, & ignorant historian”
Who is Jane Austen?
112
This kid lit classic has a chapter called “The Puppies Arrive”
What is One Hundred and One Dalmatians?
113
E.L. James self-published this first book in an erotic series that started as fan fiction loosely based on “Twilight”
What is Fifty Shades of Grey?
114
The cover of the first edition of this 1961 military novel included a dancing figure & a little airplane
What is Catch-22?
115
John Reed gave an eyewitness account of the Bolshevik Revolution in “Ten Days That” did this
What is Shook The World?
116
“The Science of Deduction” is chapter one of this Sherlock Holmes story
What is The Sign of Four?
117
The novel titled this “Patient” is set in Italy & was written by Sri Lankan-Canadian Michael Ondaatje
What is The English?
118
Born off Queensland, Kath Walker, aka Oodgeroo Noonuccal, wrote “We Are Going”, the 1st book of poems by a person of this ethnicity
What are Aboriginal?
119
Gabriel Sundukian wrote this language’s greatest dramas in what’s now the country of Georgia
What is Armenian?
120
This poet told the Nobel Banquet, “Our Irish theatre could (never) have come into existence but for” Henrik Ibsen
Who is William Butler Yeats?
121
Son of a Polish patriot, he was born in what’s now Berdychiv, Ukraine & wrote works like “Typhoon” in English
Who is Joseph Conrad?
122
This book by Malcolm Gladwell subtitled “The Power of Thinking Without Thinking” is a real eye-opener
What is Blink?
123
Born a slave, Sethe escapes to Ohio but is haunted by memories of a lost baby in this Toni Morrison novel
What is Beloved?
124
2 psychics have a pyrokinetic child in this Stephen King work
What is Firestarter?
125
This 1974 James Michener novel covers centuries, not just 1 significant year, in the history of Colorado
What is Centennial?
126
In this 1984 William Gibson cyberpunk classic, a data thief matches wits with a powerful artificial intelligence
What is Neuromancer?
127
“Pebble in the Sky” was his first novel, the “Foundation” of a long & prolific career writing science fiction
Who is Asimov?
128
“The Fastest Kid in the Fifth Grade” is chapter 3 of “Bridge to” this enchanted land
What is Terabithia?
129
He taught us “The Power of Myth”
Who is Joseph Campbell?
130
The title of this debut novel by Gillian Flynn is an allusion to cutting, part of Camille Preaker’s traumatic past in the book
What is Sharp Objects?
131
The first book in a series, it opens in Inverness in 1945 & begins. “It wasn’t a very likely place for disappearances”
What is Outlander?
