British Reference Books Trivia Quiz

Answer: The Bible (King James Version)

The "Concordance" is an alphabetical listing of the words used in the King James Version of the Bible, giving the chapter and verse in which each use of the words is found. For example, if you want to find the context of "the wages of sin is death," look under "wages" or "sin" or "death" and you'll be referred to Romans 6:23.

Alexander Cruden, a Scottish proof-reader and bookseller, published the first edition of his "Complete Concordance to the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments" in 1737 - 38. He was something of an eccentric, and is known to have been confined for brief periods in lunatic asylums, but a recent biography argues that he was not mad.

Answer: parliamentary debates

Luke Hansard was the publisher of the House of Commons Journals from 1774 to 1828. His son, T. C. Hansard, originally published unofficial accounts of parliamentary debates, and retained the job when the publication became official. After 1890 the family was no longer involved in the publication, but the name Hansard continued to be used colloquially and re-appeared on the title page in 1943.

Answer: genealogy of peers, baronets and knights

Burke's Peerage, Baronetage and Knightage first appeared in 1826 and claimed to be "exhibiting the present state of those exalted ranks, with their armorial bearings, mottoes, etc., and deducing the lineage of each house from the founders of their honours." Some people have always been sceptical about claims to ancient lineage, and according to one of Oscar Wilde's characters, "the Peerage" was "the best thing in fiction that the English have ever done." Today, however, its facts are generally regarded as reliable.

The 107th edition was published in 2003.

Answer: clergyman

Crockford's Clerical Directory was first published in 1838. It contains details of the clergy of the Church of England and other churches which are in communion with Canterbury.

Answer: railway timetables

George Bradshaw's first railway guide was published in Manchester in 1839. The "Monthly Railway Guide" began in 1841 and a "Continental Railway Guide" followed in 1847. Bradshaw died in 1853 but his guides went on from strength to strength, becoming an indispensable aid to Victorians who travelled frequently.

In the twentieth century, as the number of railway companies declined and car ownership gradually increased, demand for Bradshaw fell off. The Continental guide ceased publication in 1939 and the British guide in 1961.

Answer: cricket

John Wisden was a famous Sussex bowler. His first Cricketer's Almanac was published in 1864: it was a strange mixture of current and historical cricket information and miscellaneous data such as the rules of bowls and the winners of horse races. Soon, however, it was concentrating exclusively on cricket. Today's Wisden contains details of just about every first-class match played in the world in the previous year, comprehensive lists of records and statistics, editorial comment, reviews of cricket books and DVDs and much more.

The current edition is about fifteen times the size of the 1864 original, while the price has risen to 800 times that of the first edition.

Answer: looking at architecture

Nikolaus Pevsner, a German Jew, was a young teacher of art history at Göttingen University when the Nazis came to power. Fleeing to England, he became an authority on English architecture and the art editor of Penguin Books. It was for Penguin that he produced his county-by-county series of guides to "The Buildings of England," beginning with Cornwall in 1951 and ending with Staffordshire in 1974.

They described not only the great cathedrals, public buildings and stately homes, but also many industrial, commercial and domestic buildings of all kinds right down to the time of publication. Like other classic reference works, they have been revised since the author's death.

Answer: music

Grove's "Dictionary of Music and Musicians" originally comprised four volumes and was complete by 1889. After his death it was revised and enlarged several times to reflect the continuing development of music and the widening interests of musicologists. In 1980 a completely rewritten "New Grove" appeared in twenty volumes.

Answer: H. W. Fowler

Henry Watson Fowler was a schoolmaster who produced "The King's English" in collaboration with his brother Frank in 1906. The brothers went on to plan "Modern English Usage," but after Frank was killed in World War I the work was produced by Henry alone.

Although it was adversely criticized by some eminent scholars such as Otto Jespersen, it was widely regarded as authoritative for decades to come. A slightly revised second edition appeared in 1965, edited by Sir Ernest Gowers. A substantially amended and far less prescriptive third edition in 1996 was the work of Robert Burchfield.

Answer: Guinness

The book, currently called "Guinness World Records," was first published in 1955, and a new edition now appears every year. Its format has changed over the years, and some of us old-fashioned trivia buffs don't altogether like the gaudy illustrations and pop-culture bias of recent editions.

However, its success is undeniable: it is generally recognized as the best-selling copyright book in the world.