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Quiz – Literary Events Timeline (10) 1890-1899

A new series beginning in 1800.
Beginning in the early years of the novel – as we know and love it – each quiz covers a decade of literary events – 2 questions per year. Births, deaths, publications, events; fiction, non-fiction, poetry, plays and books for children.

  • Question of

    1890 – ‘The best time to plan a book is while you’re doing the dishes.’ Which prolific writer was born in Devon on September 15th?

    • Agatha Christie
    • Jean Rhys
  • Question of

    1890 – Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler is recognised as a classic of what type of drama?

    • Realism
    • Melodrama
  • Question of

    1891 – ‘Love makes your soul crawl out from its hiding place.’ Which novelist was born in Alabama on January 7th?

    • Zora Neale Hurston
    • Willa Cather
  • Question of

    1891 – In Hardy’s classic, Tess of the d’Urbervilles, which A does poor Tess fall in love with?

    • Angel
    • Alec
  • Question of

    1892 – Finish the title of Oscar Wilde’s popular play: Lady Windermere’s —

    • Fan
    • Mother
  • Question of

    1892 – ‘Little by little, one travels far.’ Which British novelist was born in South Africa on January 3rd?

    • JRR Tolkien
    • George Orwell
  • Question of

    1893 – Which short story by Arthur Conan Doyle shocked its many readers by killing off Sherlock Holmes at the Reichenbach Falls?

    • The Final Problem
    • The Hound of the Baskervilles
  • Question of

    1893 – ‘Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,/Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge…’ which war poet was born in Shropshire on March 18th?

    • Wilfred Owen
    • Rupert Brooke
  • Question of

    1894 – GB Shaw’s Arms and the Man is a play in which genre?

    • Comedy
    • Tragedy
  • Question of

    1894 – In Kipling’s Jungle Book what type of animal is Rikki-Tikki-Tavi?

    • A mongoose
    • A porcupine
  • Question of

    1895 – In Wells’ Time Machine, how far into the future does the Traveller go at the first attempt?

    • 5 hours
    • 82 years
  • Question of

    1895 – In Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest which of the young ‘gentlemen’ call themselves Ernest?

    • Jack
    • Algernon
  • Question of

    1896 – Which American newspaper publishes its first book review section?

    • The New York Times
    • The Washington Post
  • Question of

    1896 – ‘I am one of the few honest people that I have ever known.’ Which major American writer was born in Minnesota on September 24th?

    • F Scott Fitzgerald
    • Ernest Hemingway
  • Question of

    1897 – Who is the fictional writer of the journal which introduced the world to Dracula and all things vampire?

    • Jonathan Harker
    • Abraham Van Helsing
  • Question of

    1897 – ‘No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely…’ so begins which classic novel?1897 – ‘No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely…’ so begins which classic novel?

    • War of the Worlds
    • The Shape of Things to Come
  • Question of

    1898 – What night of the year does Collins’ horror novella The Turn of the Screw begin?

    • Christmas Eve
    • Halloween
  • Question of

    1898 – ‘He did not wear his scarlet coat/For blood and wine are red/And blood and wine were on his hands/When they found him with the dead…’ begins which famous end of century poem?

    • The Ballad of Reading Gaol
    • The Darkling Thrush
  • Question of

    1899 – Which of Shakespeare’s plays was the first to be published in the first scholarly editions of the Bard’s plays – The Arden Shakespeare?

    • Hamlet
    • Romeo and Juliet
  • Question of

    1899 – ‘It is discouraging how many people are shocked by honesty and how few by deceit.’ The birth of which writer in Middlesex on December 16th wraps up this century?

    • Noel Coward
    • CS Forester

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