Authors & Poets

40 questions · Answers revealed below each question · Print this set

1.Which author wrote Things Fall Apart?
- A. Alexandre Dumas
- B. John Steinbeck
- C. Charlotte Brontë
- D. Chinua Achebe
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Chinua Achebe
Did you know? Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart is the most widely read African novel.
2.Which author wrote Brave New World?
- A. Émile Zola
- B. Joseph Conrad
- C. Aldous Huxley
- D. Hermann Hesse
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Aldous Huxley
Did you know? Aldous Huxley was the brother of biologist Julian Huxley.
3.Which author wrote The Trial?
- A. Ivan Turgenev
- B. Victor Hugo
- C. Margaret Atwood
- D. Franz Kafka
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Franz Kafka
Did you know? Franz Kafka asked his friend Max Brod to burn his unpublished manuscripts.
4.Which author wrote The Seagull and The Cherry Orchard?
- A. Anton Chekhov
- B. Albert Camus
- C. Thomas Mann
- D. Alexandre Dumas
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Anton Chekhov
Did you know? Anton Chekhov was a practicing medical doctor as well as a writer.
5.Which author wrote the Divine Comedy?
- A. Dante Alighieri
- B. Albert Camus
- C. Isabel Allende
- D. Anton Chekhov
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Dante Alighieri
Did you know? Dante Alighieri called his poem simply "Comedy"; "Divine" was added by later admirers.
6.Which author wrote Jane Eyre under the pen name Currer Bell?
- A. Marcel Proust
- B. William Faulkner
- C. Jack Kerouac
- D. Charlotte Brontë
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Charlotte Brontë
Did you know? Charlotte Brontë published Jane Eyre in 1847.
7.Which author wrote War and Peace and Anna Karenina?
- A. Leo Tolstoy
- B. Ernest Hemingway
- C. Margaret Atwood
- D. Alexandre Dumas
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Leo Tolstoy
Did you know? Leo Tolstoy was born at Yasnaya Polyana, his family estate.
8.Which author wrote The Count of Monte Cristo?
- A. Anton Chekhov
- B. Alexandre Dumas
- C. Orhan Pamuk
- D. E. M. Forster
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Alexandre Dumas
Did you know? Alexandre Dumas also wrote The Three Musketeers.
9.Which author wrote the Decameron?
- A. Leo Tolstoy
- B. Dante Alighieri
- C. Giovanni Boccaccio
- D. Nikolai Gogol
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Giovanni Boccaccio
Did you know? Giovanni Boccaccio's Decameron tells one hundred stories told over ten days.
10.Which author created Oliver Twist and Ebenezer Scrooge?
- A. Charles Dickens
- B. Charlotte Brontë
- C. Joseph Heller
- D. Arthur Rimbaud
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Charles Dickens
Did you know? Charles Dickens (1812-1870) is one of the most famous Victorian novelists.
11.Which author wrote Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov?
- A. Kazuo Ishiguro
- B. Fyodor Dostoevsky
- C. Giovanni Boccaccio
- D. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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Fyodor Dostoevsky
Did you know? Fyodor Dostoevsky survived a mock execution in 1849.
12.Which author wrote Siddhartha?
- A. Hermann Hesse
- B. Selma Lagerlöf
- C. George Orwell
- D. Oscar Wilde
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Hermann Hesse
Did you know? Hermann Hesse won the Nobel Prize in 1946.
13.Which author wrote Treasure Island and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde?
- A. Anton Chekhov
- B. Robert Louis Stevenson
- C. Rudyard Kipling
- D. Oscar Wilde
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Robert Louis Stevenson
Did you know? Robert Louis Stevenson wrote Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in a few weeks of feverish drafting.
14.Which author wrote Beloved?
- A. Ivan Turgenev
- B. George Orwell
- C. Émile Zola
- D. Toni Morrison
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Toni Morrison
Did you know? Toni Morrison won the Nobel Prize in 1993, the first Black woman to receive it.
15.Which author won the Nobel Prize in 1913 as its first non-European laureate?
- A. Emily Brontë
- B. Dante Alighieri
- C. E. M. Forster
- D. Rabindranath Tagore
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Rabindranath Tagore
Did you know? Rabindranath Tagore wrote the national anthems of India and Bangladesh.
16.Which author wrote The House of the Spirits?
- A. Rudyard Kipling
- B. Isabel Allende
- C. Giovanni Boccaccio
- D. Fyodor Dostoevsky
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Isabel Allende
Did you know? Isabel Allende is a Chilean author writing in Spanish.
17.Which children's author wrote Winnie-the-Pooh?
- A. L. M. Montgomery
- B. Roald Dahl
- C. A. A. Milne
- D. Lewis Carroll
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A. A. Milne
Did you know? A. A. Milne based Pooh's world on Ashdown Forest in England.
18.Which playwright wrote Blood Wedding and The House of Bernarda Alba?
- A. Gil Vicente
- B. Federico García Lorca
- C. Tennessee Williams
- D. Aeschylus
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Federico García Lorca
Did you know? Federico García Lorca was killed at the start of the Spanish Civil War in 1936.
19.Which poet wrote The Flowers of Evil?
- A. Castro Alves
- B. Alexander Pushkin
- C. Emily Dickinson
- D. Charles Baudelaire
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Charles Baudelaire
Did you know? Charles Baudelaire's Flowers of Evil was fined for obscenity in 1857.
20.Which writer was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2010?
- A. Dario Fo
- B. Saul Bellow
- C. Mario Vargas Llosa
- D. Pablo Neruda
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Mario Vargas Llosa
Did you know? Vargas Llosa's The Time of the Hero drew on his army years.
21.Which author led the naturalist school with his Rougon-Macquart cycle?
- A. Joseph Conrad
- B. Émile Zola
- C. Albert Camus
- D. Alexandre Dumas
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Émile Zola
Did you know? Émile Zola defended Alfred Dreyfus in his open letter "J'accuse…!".
22.Which children's author wrote Anne of Green Gables?
- A. Beatrix Potter
- B. L. M. Montgomery
- C. Roald Dahl
- D. Astrid Lindgren
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L. M. Montgomery
Did you know? L. M. Montgomery set Anne of Green Gables on Prince Edward Island.
23.Which playwright wrote Three Sisters and Uncle Vanya?
- A. Aeschylus
- B. Anton Chekhov
- C. Ariano Suassuna
- D. Arthur Miller
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Anton Chekhov
Did you know? Chekhov's plays were first staged by the Moscow Art Theatre.
24.Which poet wrote the Duino Elegies?
- A. Alexander Pushkin
- B. Lord Byron
- C. Rainer Maria Rilke
- D. Cecília Meireles
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Rainer Maria Rilke
Did you know? Rainer Maria Rilke wrote in German while living across Prague, Paris, and Switzerland.
25.Which writer was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1992?
- A. Eugene O'Neill
- B. Derek Walcott
- C. Luigi Pirandello
- D. Winston Churchill
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Derek Walcott
Did you know? Walcott's epic Omeros recasts Homer in the Caribbean.
26.Which author wrote Doctor Zhivago?
- A. Kazuo Ishiguro
- B. Boris Pasternak
- C. E. M. Forster
- D. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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Boris Pasternak
Did you know? Boris Pasternak won the 1958 Nobel Prize but declined it under Soviet pressure.
27.Which children's author created Peter Rabbit?
- A. Beatrix Potter
- B. Roald Dahl
- C. Frances Hodgson Burnett
- D. L. M. Montgomery
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Beatrix Potter
Did you know? Beatrix Potter self-published the first printing of The Tale of Peter Rabbit.
28.Which playwright wrote Ghosts and Hedda Gabler?
- A. Sophocles
- B. Henrik Ibsen
- C. Aristophanes
- D. Arthur Miller
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Henrik Ibsen
Did you know? Henrik Ibsen is often called the father of modern realism in theatre.
29.Which poet wrote Leaves of Grass?
- A. Walt Whitman
- B. Langston Hughes
- C. Percy Bysshe Shelley
- D. Carlos Drummond de Andrade
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Walt Whitman
Did you know? Walt Whitman self-published and repeatedly revised Leaves of Grass across decades.
30.Which writer was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1938?
- A. Knut Hamsun
- B. Pablo Neruda
- C. Pearl S. Buck
- D. Miguel Ángel Asturias
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Pearl S. Buck
Did you know? Buck won for her epics of Chinese peasant life.
31.Which author wrote Madame Bovary?
- A. Anton Chekhov
- B. Gustave Flaubert
- C. Alexandre Dumas
- D. George Bernard Shaw
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Gustave Flaubert
Did you know? Gustave Flaubert was tried for offending public morals over Madame Bovary in 1857.
32.Which children's author created Peter Pan?
- A. J. M. Barrie
- B. L. M. Montgomery
- C. Roald Dahl
- D. Beatrix Potter
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J. M. Barrie
Did you know? J. M. Barrie gave the Peter Pan copyright to a London children's hospital.
33.Which playwright wrote the Oresteia trilogy?
- A. Molière
- B. Tennessee Williams
- C. Ariano Suassuna
- D. Aeschylus
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Aeschylus
Did you know? Aeschylus is traditionally called the father of tragedy.
34.Which poet won the Nobel Prize in 1923?
- A. Langston Hughes
- B. Olavo Bilac
- C. William Butler Yeats
- D. Walt Whitman
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William Butler Yeats
Did you know? William Butler Yeats was a senator of the Irish Free State.
35.Which writer was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1991?
- A. Anatole France
- B. Henryk Sienkiewicz
- C. Nadine Gordimer
- D. Pearl S. Buck
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Nadine Gordimer
Did you know? Gordimer's fiction chronicled apartheid South Africa.
36.Which author set most of his novels in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County?
- A. Toni Morrison
- B. Ivan Turgenev
- C. William Faulkner
- D. Jean-Paul Sartre
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William Faulkner
Did you know? William Faulkner won the Nobel Prize in 1949.
37.Which children's author wrote The Secret Garden?
- A. Frances Hodgson Burnett
- B. L. M. Montgomery
- C. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
- D. Louisa May Alcott
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Frances Hodgson Burnett
Did you know? Frances Hodgson Burnett also wrote Little Lord Fauntleroy.
38.Which playwright wrote the comedies Lysistrata and The Birds?
- A. Federico García Lorca
- B. Aristophanes
- C. Gil Vicente
- D. Arthur Miller
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Aristophanes
Did you know? Aristophanes is the chief surviving voice of ancient Greek comedy.
39.Which poet wrote "The Charge of the Light Brigade"?
- A. Alfred, Lord Tennyson
- B. Langston Hughes
- C. Robert Frost
- D. Walt Whitman
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Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Did you know? Alfred Tennyson was Poet Laureate for over forty years.
40.Which writer was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1969?
- A. Samuel Beckett
- B. Wisława Szymborska
- C. Gabriela Mistral
- D. Luigi Pirandello
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Samuel Beckett
Did you know? Beckett wrote Waiting for Godot, a landmark of absurdist theatre.

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