Literary Trades Trivia Quiz

Answer: Stone mason

'Jude the Obscure' tells the story of Jude Fawley's troubled life as he struggles to overcome the poor, working class background which prevents him from realising his dream of attending university. The disasters he faces include a hasty marriage to (and subsequent separation from) the devious Arabella Weir; being ostracised from society because of his relationship with his married cousin Sue Bridehead; the deaths of all his children; and finally Sue suffering a miscarriage and returning to her husband. There is no happy ending as he then becomes seriously ill and dies at a young age, with his dreams of education and social improvement unfulfilled. As you can see, this book is not exactly a cheerful, uplifting read...

The novel was first published in 1895 and was not generally well-received by the Victorian critics due to its themes of adultery, illegitimacy and criticisms of Christianity. It has been adapted for both stage and cinema, a notable production being the 1996 film starring Christopher Eccleston as Jude and Kate Winslet as Sue.

Jude was a stone mason who was trained in the renovation of church masonry. The picture clue is a view of the south wall and western towers of York Minster.

Answer: Gardener

At the beginning of 'The Lord of the Rings' Sam Gamgee was Frodo Baggins's gardener. After he overheard Frodo's conversation with Gandalf about a ring Frodo had recently inherited from his cousin Bilbo, Sam was recruited to join Frodo on the dangerous journey to return the ring to Mount Doom in Mordor. Sam subsequently became one of the four hobbit members of the 'Fellowship of the Ring' (the others were Frodo, Pippin Took and Merry Brandybuck). He briefly became a 'Ring-bearer' after Frodo was captured during their journey through Mordor.

After his return to his home Sam was hailed as a hero, inherited Frodo's house (after Frodo, Bilbo, and Gandalf all left Middle Earth) and was elected Mayor of the Shire.

The picture clue shows the results of some gardening work - a flowerbed in Hampshire, England. However, I can't claim that this is likely to look like Frodo's flowerbeds given the pretty slim chance that Middle Earth and England share the same basic flora.

Answer: Goatherd

Johanna Spyri was a Swiss novelist and short-story writer who lived from 1827 to 1901. Her most famous work, 'Heidi', was first published in 1880 and has since been adapted many times for film and television. The 1937 film 'Heidi' starred Shirley Temple as the eponymous heroine.

Heidi's story starts when she is taken, as a five year old, to live with her grandfather at his remote hut in the Swiss mountains. She soon becomes a firm favourite with the local people, particularly a young goatherd named Peter and his family. At the age of eight, Heidi is removed from her beloved mountain home to become a companion to Clara, an invalid German girl. The one thing that keeps her going in her unwished-for new home is her desire to learn to read, so that she can one day return home and read to Peter's blind grandmother.

The picture clue shows a domestic breed of goat - complete with particularly fetching beard.

Answer: Farmer

George Orwell's 'Animal Farm' is an allegory of Russian politics in the first half of the twentieth century. The drunken farmer Mr Jones, who fails to feed and care for the animals of the farm, represents Tsar Nicholas II, while the farm's pigs represent the Russian Communists and revolutionaries. (Old Major, who provides the inspiration for the revolt, represents the founder of Communism, Karl Marx; Snowball represents the exiled Leon Trotsky; and Napoleon is a representation of Joseph Stalin). After the revolution the animals follow their own doctrine known as 'Animalism', which included the famous rule "all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others".

Mr Jones' fate was not as severe as that suffered by his counterpart Tsar Nicholas II. While the Tsar was murdered along with his wife and children, Mr Jones escaped from the farm and was able to lead an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to regain his property. The attempt was known as the 'Battle of the Cowshed' - hence the otherwise rather odd picture clue of the rear end of a cow in a cowshed...

Answer: Moneylender

Ebenezer Scrooge was a rich moneylender who mistreated his employee, Bob Cratchit, and refused the friendship offered by his nephew, Fred. One Christmas Eve he is visited by the ghost of his former partner Jacob Marley, along with the ghosts of "Christmas Past", "Christmas Present" and "Christmas Yet to Come". Together this collection of spirits manage to show Scrooge the error of his ways by presenting him visions of: the happy family life enjoyed by his former fiancée; Bob Cratchit's seriously ill son Tiny Tim; and his own death and untended grave. In the space of one night Scrooge is transformed from a people hating, miserable old man into a kind and generous benefactor.

Along with coining the term 'Scrooge' for a penny-pincher or miser, 'A Christmas Carol' is also credited with popularising the terms "Merry Christmas" and "Bah! Humbug!"

Scrooge wasn't an archaelogist so he would have been dealing in (slightly) newer coins than those depicted in the photo, which shows part of the Wickham Market Hoard. The hoard was discovered in Suffolk, England in 2008 and consisted of over 800 gold coins dating from around 40BC to 15AD.

Answer: Lawyer

In 'To Kill a Mockingbird' Atticus Finch is a lawyer who is engaged to defend a black man, Tom Robinson, against a charge of raping a white woman, Mayella Ewell, in 1930s Alabama. Finch robustly defends Robinson, appearing to prove his innocence in court, but Robinson is convicted regardless. The novel highlights the legal injustices and general racial inequality suffered by the black population of the southern United States prior to the civil rights movement. In the 1962 film adaptation Atticus Finch was portrayed by star actor, Gregory Peck.

'To Kill a Mockingbird' won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1961 and earned Lee an honorary membership of the Alabama State Bar in 2008 for creating the character of Atticus Finch - an honest and moral lawyer who had a significant impact on the US legal profession despite his fictional status.

The picture clue shows a gavel, an item that Atticus Finch would have been all too familiar with as it is commonly used by judges in US courtrooms to begin proceedings, call for order or signal the end of a court session.

Answer: Used car salesman

Roald Dahl's 'Matilda' was first published in 1988 and a film adaptation, directed by Danny DeVito, came out in 1996. DeVito also took the role of the unpleasant and domineering Mr Wormwood, Matilda's father, who relished cheating his customers by turning back the mileage and adding sawdust to the engines of the secondhand cars he sold.

Through the course of the story Matilda moves from carrying out practical jokes on her parents (such as hiding a parrot up the chimney) to using her newly discovered powers of telekinesis to hound the evil headmistress, Agatha Trunchbull, into returning the inheritance of her niece - who turns out to be Matilda's favourite teacher, Miss Honey. Matilda's unusual ability is a manifestation of her untapped intelligence; once she gets more challenging school work, the power disappears and Matilda goes back to being a ordinary (albeit very intelligent) school girl. She gets a happy ending when her father is exposed for selling stolen cars and flees with the rest of the family to Spain, leaving Matilda to be raised by the loving and supportive Miss Honey.

The picture clue shows some used cars.

Answer: Carpenter

'Adam Bede' was the first of George Eliot's seven published novels, appearing in 1859. It was written under a pseudonym, possibly because Eliot (Mary Ann Evans) wished to keep her fictional writing separate from her already well-known career as an assistant editor of the radical journal 'The Westminster Review'. She also believed that using a male pseudonym would result in her work being taken more seriously.

Eliot's novels are known for their realistic depiction of life in rural England. 'Adam Bede' is set in the fictional village of Hayslope in 1799, and although the setting might be a realistic portrayal of an 18th century English village, it seems likely that the plot would have been considered a slightly unusual turn of events. It centres on a milkmaid falling in love with the soldier grandson of the local squire (not that unlikely I suppose); the said soldier grandson taking advantage and leaving her pregnant and alone (again sadly plausible); the milkmaid abandoning her baby and leaving it to die in a field (becoming more unusual); and finally the soldier grandson turning up to heroically save the milkmaid from the gallows (distinctly unlikely).

The picture clue shows some trees in Hoot Woods, a beech and maple forest in Indiana - admittedly a long way away from Eliot's England.

Answer: University professor

Dan Brown's character, Robert Langdon, is a professor of religious iconology and symbology at the University of Harvard. He first appeared in the 2000 novel 'Angel and Demons' helping to track down a mysterious organisation who were kidnapping and murdering Roman Catholic cardinals in the run up to a papal election. Langdon nearly lost his own life when forced to jump out of a helicopter at several thousand feet, but luckily made an implausibly tidy splash-landing in the River Tiber. He went on to be accused of murder ('The Da Vinci Code'), suffer a near drowning in a sensory deprivation tank ('The Lost Symbol'), develop amnesia ('Inferno'), attempt to prevent the world's population being infected by a plague ('Inferno'), and discover the secret of the Holy Grail ('The Da Vinci Code')! Not exactly all in a day's work for your average academic...

The novels have also inspired a series of film adaptations with Tom Hanks taking on the role of this intrepid professor.

The picture clue is of a mortarboard, also known as a graduate cap or by the imaginative title - 'square academic cap'.

Answer: Clergyman

William Collins is Mr Bennet's cousin and heir to his Longbourn estate. He proposes marriage to the novel's heroine, Elizabeth Bennet, in an attempt to make reparations for disinheriting her and her sisters. Unsurprisingly, he is quickly refused, but, like Elizabeth, most readers are unlikely to feel too sorry for him as he is socially inept, avaricious and an insufferable bore on the topic of Lady Catherine de Bourgh. He is a clergyman who has gained the living of Hunsford parsonage, which is located next to Lady Catherine's Rosings Park estate.

Although in the 21st century becoming a clergyman is likely to be a vocation rather than a career move, this was definitely not the case in Jane Austen's England. Parishes, or 'livings', were given out by both the church and wealthy landowners such as Lady Catherine, who sometimes had several churches within their vast estates. The clergyman's income came from collecting the tithes - the tenth of their income or produce that parishioners were expected to pay to the church.

The picture is of the church of St Mary the Virgin in Chalk, Kent - the same county as the fictional Hunsford.