Writers' Final Stroke of The Pen Quiz

Answer: William Shakespeare

Grave-robbing was popular in Shakespeare's time and this may have influenced the Bard's decision to include a curse on his tombstone. The full curse is as follows:

"Good friend for Jesus sake forbear,
To dig the dust enclosed here.
Blessed be the man that spares these stones,
And cursed be he that moves my bones."

His grave can be found in Holy Trinity Church (Shakespeare's local parish church) in Stratford-upon-Avon.

Answer: Robert Louis Stevenson

Stevenson's epitaph is his poem, 'Requiem' (1890). It, and his grave can be found on the island of Upolu - one of the main islands that make up the nation of Samoa. Upon Stevenson's death, locals reportedly spent all night cutting a path so he could be buried near the summit of Mount Vaea.

Answer: Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde's tomb can be found in Paris, France, where he was living when he died. Over the years, it became covered it in red lipstick as admirers kissed the tomb when they visited. In 2011, the tomb was surrounded by glass as Wilde's descendants feared the tomb was being degraded due to the practice.

The epitaph passage is from 'The Ballad of Reading Gaol' (1898), which Wilde wrote about a soldier named Charles Wooldridge who was hanged for murdering his wife. The two men were in Reading Gaol at the same time, although apparently never met.

Answer: Dorothy Parker

Although she died in 1967, Dorothy Parker's ashes weren't moved to their final resting place in New York until 2020. In the interim, her remains had been kept in an attorney's office and interred in Baltimore. In the latter location, her grave was actually marked by a plaque that contained her suggested 'Excuse my dust' epitaph.

Her family requested Parker's remains be relocated to New York in 2020 and in 2021 they unveiled her gravestone which contains the 'dust is very pretty' phrase from her 1925 poem 'Epitaph for a Darling Lady'.

Answer: Agatha Christie

The epitaph comes from the epic poem "The Faerie Queene" (1590) by Edmund Spenser, and is fitting for a woman who's been referred to as the 'Queen of Crime'. The fictional detectives who feature in many of Christie's tales are Hercule Poirot and Miss Jane Marple.

Agatha Christie is buried alongside her husband in a small English village called Cholsey.

Answer: Jack Kerouac

Born Jean Louis Kirouac, 'Ti Jean' refers to Jack Kerouac's childhood nickname.

The quote is on a separate, newer gravestone and comes from Kerouac's novel "On the Road" (1957), which describes a series of road trips taken across the United States of America. It is considered semi-autobiographical since Kerouac had taken similar trips with his friend Neal Cassady.

Answer: Margaret Wise Brown

Margaret Wise Brown's most recognised works are "Goodnight Moon" and "The Runaway Bunny", both published during the 1940s. Interestingly, even though her books were primarily for them, Brown admitted that she didn't particularly like children.

Brown died in 1952 at the age of 42 and her ashes were scattered across her island home in Maine. She specifically requested that her epitaph have nothing to do with her book titles, preferring instead, "Writer of songs and nonsense".

Answer: Jonathan Swift

The Irish author of "Gulliver's Travels" (1726), Swift left instructions for his epitaph to be "deeply cut and strongly gilded" on black Kilkenny marble after his death. The text on Swift's epitaph is carved in Latin and his grave can be found in St Patrick's Cathedral in Dublin, Ireland.

Answer: Lewis Carroll

Lewis Caroll is the pseudonym for Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, author of "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" (1865). When he died in 1898, he was buried in the town of Guildford in the UK county of Surrey and his gravestone bears some religious passages.

In 1982, the memorial in Poet's Corner of Westminster Abbey was unveiled and its suitably whimsical epitaph is the first line of Carroll's poem 'Sylvie and Bruno' (1889).

Answer: Octavia Butler

The 'Earthseed' religion is central to Butler's science fiction novel "Parable of the Sower" (1993) and its sequel "Parable of the Talents" (1998). Octavia Butler was a bit of a rarity in the science fiction genre since she was African American. She was also dyslexic.

Butler died in 2006, aged 58, after a fall. She is buried in the Mountain View Cemetery in Altadena, California, USA.