Fill Me In (#2) Trivia Quiz

Answer: Wilkie

William Wilkie Collins was one of the most popular and prolific writers of his time, the mid-nineteenth century. His life is as interesting as the suspenseful fiction for which he was so popular. For instance, he was apparently addicted to opium and came to believe that he was haunted by a double he himself called "Ghost Wilkie." Although he did not marry, he had active relationships with various women and became a father of three children.

Answer: Wollstonecraft

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (nee Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin), came from a very famous family. Her father, William Godwin, was a philosopher who wrote "An Inquiry Concerning Political Justice," and her mother was Mary Wollstonecraft, a famous early feminist who wrote "A Vindication of the Rights of Women." Mary Shelley's brilliant, subtle novel of a doctor and his created "monster" dramatizes energies of Romanticism and gives voice to the crippling effects of injustices of all kinds.

Answer: Makepeace

William Makepeace Thackerey is the complete name of the famous author of "Vanity Fair," a novel which displays the cruelties in a society dominated by social blindness and the desire for wealth. In person, Thackeray was a tall man, about 6'3," who had been born in Calcutta, India. For decades, his wife was totally locked into a depressive state, because of which Thackerey was thought of as a widower.

Answer: Bysshe

Percy Bysshe Shelley was one of the foremost British Romantic poets. He, like many other poets at that time, identified with the oppressed and the downtrodden. In his own life, he had been expelled from school for his atheism. Readers praise Shelley's keen musical ear and his interest in philosophy.

He was married twice, the second time to Mary, the author of "Frankenstein." He is most famous for the poems, "Ozymandias," "Ode to the West Wind," and "Prometheus Unbound." Shelley drowned at the age of twenty nine off of the coast of Italy in a storm.

Answer: Henri

Marie-Henri Beyle is the complete name of the French novelist Stendhal. Stendhal is famous for his understanding of psychology and a new kind of realism. He wrote "The Red and the Black" and "The Charterhouse of Parma." A traveller and an elegant man, he is known to have been a womanizer.

Some people call him a 'romantic realist,' meaning that he combines the longings and passion of Romanticism with the accuracy and details of Realism. "The Red and the Black" presents the efforts of a young man to rise above the boring details of his provincial life. Ultimately, he discovers, among other things, that his own character undoes him. Stendhal suffered from syphilis and had a sudden seizure which killed him.

Answer: Perkins

Charlotte Perkins Gilman is the author of a famous short narrative called "The Yellow Wallpaper." This novella considers the negative results on a woman of what "the rest cure, a method of dealing with women's allegedly "nervous" or "hysterical" psychological states of mind.

The heroine in this novella is forbidden to write, to create, to think hard. Essentially, she is put to bed by her physician husband after childbirth. Gilman says that she wrote it to get back at the physician who developed this cure--the famous S. Weir Mitchell. Gilman also wrote a book called "Women and Economics" as well of one of the first woman's utopia in her novel called "Herland."

Answer: Tecumseh

William Tecumseh Sherman (or 'Cump' as his intimates called him) was a general in the Union Army during the Civil War.
(He is not to be confused with Tecumseh (or Tekamthi) who was a well known Native Amerian leader of the Shawnee).
Sherman is forever associated with the "scorched earth policies" which identify the thoroughness with which he attempted to devastate the American South. Sherman's loyalty to the North, to the Union, is legend. He applied the same severity in his subsequent battles against what he called "a few thieving, ragged Indians." He completely backed the development of the railroad. Overall, Sherman's name is linked to celebrated battles in the Civil War, such as The March to the Sea, Shiloh, Atlanta, Savannah, and others.

Answer: Lloyd

William Lloyd Garrison was a passionate opponent of slavery who insisted that he "would be heard." Garrison once burned a copy of the U.S. Constitution in 1844 due to his belief that it enslaved black people. Unfortunately, Garrison and Frederick Douglass, two eloquent orators, had a profound disagreement over the role of the Constitution in the emanicipation process. Garrison criticized Douglass openly, and their feud was never resolved.

Answer: Gordon

George Gordon Byron, also known as Lord Byron, was (or wanted to be seen as) the epitome of the Romantic hero. His most famous writings are "Don Juan," "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage" and the shorter poem, "She Walks in Beauty." Caroline Lamb, one of his female friends, said of him that he was "mad, bad, and dangerous to know," thus coining a phrase that has come to be widely used. Byron was part of the group of great English poets, including Keats and Shelley, who made much of beauty, danger, and freedom. Byron died of a fever in Greece.

Answer: Ewart

William Ewart Gladstone was the prime minister of England four times. He is forever associated with the world of Victorian England. His dominance in this period is particularly interesting given the tensions between Gladstone and Queen Victoria. Gladstone's political beliefs would also clash radically with Benjamin Disreaeli's. Gladstone was an early defender of home rule for Ireland. This political position would lead to his political downfall.
Gladstone was a tough man. Apparently, at around 85 years old, he lugged some 32,000 books in a wheelbarrow to their final destination.