"D"etect the Author Quiz | Literature: Something in Common

Quiz Answer Key and Fun Facts

1. Born in London in 1907 into a family of writers, this romantic novelist became known for stories that did not deliver the traditional happy ending. The adaptation of her 1938 novel earned Alfred Hitchcock the first of his five Oscar nominations for Best Director. Who is this writer?

Answer: Daphne du Maurier

Born in 1907, she became Lady Browning when she married in 1932. Created a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the Queen's Birthday Honours list of 1969, she became Lady Browning; Dame Daphne du Maurier DBE.

Du Maurier's first novel, "The Loving Spirit", was published in 1931, but it was "Jamaica Inn" (1936) and "Rebecca" (1938) that catapulted her to international recognition. The 1941 Hitchcock film of "Rebecca" was nominated for 11 Oscars including Best Director. Laurence Olivier, Joan Fontaine and Judith Anderson were all nominated, but three-quarters of a century later it remains the only film (since 1936, when supporting actor categories were introduced) to win Best Picture without also collection a statuette in a directorial, acting or writing category.

2. Born in Illinois in 1950, in 2011 this mystery/crime writer became the second American novelist to publish a new James Bond novel. His most famous creation is the quadriplegic, forensic criminalist Lincoln Rhyme, who has featured in more than a dozen of his novels. Who is this author?

Answer: Jeffrey Deaver

Born in the affluent Chicago suburb of Glen Ellyn, Illinois in 1950, best-selling author Jeffrey Deaver has been awarded the Ellery Queen Reader's Award for Best Short Story of the Year on three occasions.

Deaver's first novel, "Manhattan Is My Beat", the first installment of the Rune Trilogy, was published in 1988. His most famous creation, Lincoln Rhyme, first appeared in 1997 in "The Bone Collector", which was subsequently adapted for the 1999 film of the same name starring Denzel Washington and Angelina Jolie. With the publication in 2011 of "Carte Blanche", Deaver became the second American (after Raymond Benson) to write an official James Bond novel.

3. Born in Texas in 1918, this former New York Times reporter won the 1960 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction with his first novel, a book that spent two years on the NY Times Bestseller List. Henry Fonda starred in the 1962 film version of the story. Who is this author?

Answer: Allen Drury

Born in Houston, Texas in 1918, Allen Stuart Drury was a member of a family directly descended from original Massachusetts Bay colonists. A graduate of Stanford, he enlisted as an infantry soldier in 1942 but was discharged on medical grounds. He spent the latter part of WWII as a reporter at the U.S. Senate.

The dark political thriller which launched Drury's career as a novelist was "Advise and Consent". Published in 1959, the cast of the 1962 film adaptation included Henry Fonda, Charles Laughton, Walter Pidgeon, Peter Lawford, Burgess Meredith and Betty White. Drury subsequently wrote five sequels to the novel.

4. Sardinian-born, the first Italian woman to win the Nobel Prize for Literature wrote primarily about the lives, customs and traditions of the people from her native island. The Nobel Prize was awarded for her "idealistically inspired writings... which with depth and sympathy deal with human problems". Who is this author?

Answer: Grazia Deledda

Grazia Maria Cosima Damiana Deledda was born in 1871 in the city of Nuoro, near the centre of the Italian island of Sardinia. She published her first novel, 'Stella d'Oriente' ("Star of the East") in 1890. By the time she won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1926, she had produced a substantial body of work written in her native Italian, although some of her novels were also translated into English.

Grazia Deledda was only the second Italian writer to win the Nobel Prize, after Giosu� Carducci (who won in 1906). She is also the only woman amongst the six Italians who won the award during the 20th century.

5. When it was published in the 1970s, our next author's first science-fantasy trilogy was heralded as the greatest work of its kind since Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings". What began as a trilogy has since mushroomed into a classic 10-novel series characterized by the moral bleakness of mankind. In between, he also produced the 5-book "Gap Series", exploring a future in which mankind has pushed out into space. Who is this author?

Answer: Stephen R. Donaldson

Stephen Reeder Donaldson was born in 1947 in Cleveland, Ohio. He is a graduate of The College of Wooster and Kent State University in his home state, and he was a student at Kent State at the time of the 1970 shootings there.

Donaldson is best-known as the author of the wonderful "The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant". These books tell the story of the eponymous hero, a leper shunned by his fellow man, who becomes the saviour of an alternative Earth from the evil Lord Foul in a manner reminiscent of Frodo the Hobbit combined with Harry Potter. The series now consists of the two original trilogies, the First Chronicles, published between 1977 and 1979, followed by the Second Chronicles (1980-83). An additional four books, dubbed the Last Chronicles, were published between 2004 and 2013, after Donaldson had invented another completely new universe for his 1990s "Gap Series".

6. Our next author is an eccentric 19th-century American female poet. Although she wrote more than 1,800 poems, only a dozen or so were published during her lifetime, and a definitive collection of her work was not produced until the 1950s. Recurrent themes of her work are death and immortality. Who is this author?

Answer: Emily Dickinson

Emily Elizabeth Dickinson was born in 1830 in the college town of Amherst in central Massachusetts. For much of her life, the introverted Dickinson rarely emerged from her home in Amherst, and most of her friendships were conducted by correspondence. Few who knew her were even aware of her writing, and it was only after her death in 1866 that her sister discovered her cache of poems.

A first, highly-edited selection of her work was published in 1890, but it was not until 1955 that a complete collection was released, and she is only now that she is considered to be one of the most important of all American poets.

7. This Chicago native won the prestigious Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1963 and now has an award for the best American science-fiction paperback original named for him. Many of his novels, whilst ostensibly sci-fi, are set in potentially real life worlds dominated by monopolistic corporations or authoritarian governments. Who is this author?

Answer: Philip K. Dick

Philip Kindred Dick was born in 1928 in Chicago, Illinois. He won the 1963 Hugo Award for the chilling "The Man in the High Castle", an alternative history novel in which the Axis won WWII. He wrote more than 120 short stories and 44 novels, 11 of which have been adapted for the big screen. Amongst the best known of these are the 1982 Ridley Scott film "Blade Runner", starring Harrison Ford, based on his 1968 novel "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" and the 1990 film "Total Recall" with Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sharon Stone, based on Dick's 1966 short story "We Can Remember It for You Wholesale".

The Philip K. Dick Award for the best sci-fi original paperback published in America was inaugurated the year after Dick's premature death at the age of just 53 in 1982.

8. A New Yorker by birth, our next writer penned twelve novels, winning the National Book Critics Circle Award three times. Best known for his historical fiction, the protagonists of his novels have been played by such stars as Timothy Hutton, James Cagney, Dustin Hoffman and Henry Fonda on film. Described as one of the most important novelist of the 20th century, who is this author?

Answer: E. L. Doctorow

Edgar Lawrence Doctorow was born in 1931 in The Bronx, NY. His debut novel "Welcome to Hard Times", published in 1960, told the story of a small settlement (named Hard Times) in Dakota Territory. It was adapted for the screen in 1967 as a Western with Henry Fonda in the lead role. Published in 1975, "Ragtime" was set in New York City at the turn of the 20th century. It became a film starring James Cagney in 1981 and a Tony-winning stage musical in 1998.

Along with "The March" (2005) and "Billy Bathgate" (1989), "Ragtime" was a winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award.

9. Appointed by Queen Elizabeth II in 2009, Carol Ann Duffy became only the second "D" writer to hold the post of Britain's Poet Laureate. The other was a poet, literary critic, translator and playwright who dominated literary life during the period of Restoration England. Who is this poet?

Answer: John Dryden

Born in 1631 in the in the village of Aldwincle in eastern Northamptonshire, John Dryden was appointed as England's first Poet Laureate in 1668 by King Charles II. The leading poet and literary critic of his day, Walter Scott nicknamed him "Glorious John" and the period became known in some literary circles as the "Age of Dryden".

Dryden wrote on numerous subjects: his conversion to Catholicism in "Religio Laici" (1682), the story of King Arthur in a 1691 poem that subsequently became an opera with music by Henry Purcell, and an ode to Saint Cecilia, "Alexander's Feast", written in 1797.

10. Only two "D" authors won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction during the 20th century. We met one of those in Q3, and the other is the only native Oregonian to win a Pulitzer Prize. The novel, "Honey in the Horn", is a coming-of-age tale set against the background of southern Oregon pioneer life in the early 20th century. Who is this author?

Answer: H. L. Davis

Harold Lenoir Davis was born in 1894 in Douglas County in southwestern Oregon. He began his writing career as a poet, publishing as edited collection of his work entitled simply "Poetry" in 1919. "Honey in the Horn" was his first novel: it was written on a 2-year sabbatical in Mexico and published in 1935. It earned Davis the 1936 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, the only Pulitzer ever won by an Oregon-born writer.

The alternatives have all made the short-list for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (DeLillo twice) but without winning.

Source: Author EnglishJedi

This quiz was reviewed by FunTrivia editor looney_tunes before going online.
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"D"etect the Author Trivia Quiz

This is the fourth instalment in this series of literary quizzes. Can you sift through the clues to identify ten authors whose names start with the letter "D"?

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