Literature Through the Ages (3): the 1920s Quiz

Answer: "The Mysterious Affair at Styles" (Agatha Christie)

Born Agatha Mary Clarissa Miller in 1890 in the south-coast seaside resort of Torquay, Dame Agatha Christie, Lady Mallowan DBE is now heralded as one of the greatest of all writers of detective fiction.
She published 73 novels, 28 short story collections and 16 plays in a writing career spanning more than half a century. Her first published novel, "The Mysterious Affair at Styles", introduced one of her two enduring characters, the Belgian super-sleuth Hercule Poirot. Poirot would appear in 33 novels, one play and more than 50 short stories before his final case, "Curtain", which was written in the 1940s but not published until shortly before the author's death in January 1976.

Also published in 1920 were the three alternatives, plus Colette's "Chéri", John Galsworthy's "In Chancery", Sinclair Lewis's classic novel "Main Street", Marcel Proust's "The Guermantes Way" and Edith Wharton's Pulitzer-winning "The Age of Innocence".

Answer: "She and Allan" (H. Rider Haggard)

Sir Henry Rider Haggard KBE was born in 1856 in the village of Bradenham in central Norfolk. A novelist and fabulist, his works are mostly-situated at the lighter end of the spectrum of Victorian-era literature.

"She and Allan" serves as a prequel to the author's 1887 novel "She: A History of Adventure", whilst the main protagonist is Allan Quatermain, the hero of his classic 1885 fable "King Solomon's Mines". The plot is driven by Quatermain's quest to communicate with deceased loved ones. A feared Zulu witch doctor tells him of "a great white sorceress who rules a hidden kingdom far to the north", and so begins the quest to find Ayesha.

Also published in 1921 were the three alternatives, plus Edgar Rice Burroughs's "Tarzan the Terrible", John Galsworthy's "To Let" (the last book in the "Forsyte Saga" trilogy), Rafael Sabatini's "Scaramouche", Baroness Orczy's "The First Sir Percy" and Booth Tarkington's "Alice Adams".

Answer: "The Absolute at Large" (Karel Capek)

Karel Capek was born in 1890 in the Austro-Hungarian village of Malé Svatoňovice, now in north-central Czech Republic. A playwright, dramatist and essayist, he is probably best-known as a sci-fi author. "The Absolute at Large" was Capek's first novel, but it is the 1936 satirical novel "War with the Newts" and the 1920 play "R.U.R" (Rossum's Universal Robots) for which he is most famous.

'Továrna na absolutno' (in the original Czech) is literally translated as "The Factory for the Absolute", but the novel was published in English with the title "The Absolute at Large". The invention of a reactor that provides cheap and abundant energy also produces an unfortunate by-product, the 'absolute', a spiritual essence that is associated with human religious experience. As use of the reactors spreads across the world, so to does fanaticism and nationalistic fervour, leading to global war.

Also published in 1922 were the three alternatives, plus Edgar Rice Burroughs's "At the Earth's Core", Willa Cather's Pulitzer-winning "One of Ours", Agatha Christie's "The Secret Adversary", Hermann Hesse's "Siddhartha", James Joyce's "Ulysses", A.A. Milne's "The Red House Mystery", Baroness Orczy's "The Triumph of the Scarlet Pimpernel", Virginia Woolf's "Jacob's Room" and Richmal Crompton's "Just William".

Answer: "The Rover" (Joseph Conrad)

Born Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski in the historic city of Berdychiv in northern Ukraine, Joseph Conrad joined the British merchant navy in 1878 and became a British citizen eight years later. Many of his novels have a nautical setting, but the main focus is the battle between the spirit of the individual and the universe at large.

"The Rover" tells the story of Peyrol, a former pirate, member of the French navy and "rover of the outer seas", as he attempts to put a life of violence behind him.

Also published in 1923 were the three alternatives, plus Willa Cather's "A Lost Lady", Colette's "Green Wheat", D.H. Lawrence's "Kangaroo", Dorothy L. Sayers' "Whose Body?" and P.G. Wodehouse's "The Inimitable Jeeves".

Answer: "A Passage to India" (E.M. Forster)

Edward Morgan Forster OM CH was born in London in 1879. Although regarded as one of the most influential writers of his generation, he published only five novels during his lifetime, starting with "Where Angels Fear to Tread" in 1905 and ending with "A Passage to India". A sixth novel, "Maurice", was published posthumously in 1971 although it had been written some sixty years earlier. Forster spent the rest of his life broadcasting on the BBC, working as literary editor for the "The Listener" and as a fellow at Cambridge University. He declined a knighthood in 1949.

Set in the British Raj in the 1920s, "A Passage to India" examines the tensions and prejudices between the British rulers and native Indians. It won the 1924 James Tait Black Memorial Prize and at the end of the century was twice voted as one of the best 100 novels of all time.

Also published in 1924 were the three alternatives, plus Edgar Rice Burroughs' "The Land That Time Forgot", Agatha Christie's "The Man in the Brown Suit" and "Poirot Investigates", Edna Ferber's "So Big", Ford Madox Ford's "Some Do Not..." and Joseph Roth's "Hotel Savoy".

Answer: "The Great Gatsby" (F. Scott Fitzgerald)

Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was born in 1896 in Saint Paul, Minnesota. He completed only four novels, all illustrating life in the "Jazz Age" of 1920s America. A fifth novel, "The Love of the Last Tycoon", unfinished at the time of his death in 1940, was published posthumously. Although he was under-appreciated during his lifetime, Fitzgerald is now widely regarded as one of the most important of all 20th century American writers.

Set in the fictional town of West Egg amongst the decadence of the Long Island social scene, "The Great Gatsby" tells the story of the mysterious millionaire Jay Gatsby and his obsession for former debutante Daisy Buchanan. It has been described as "a cautionary tale regarding the American Dream".

Also published in 1925 were the three alternatives, plus Ford Madox Ford's "No More Parades", Aldous Huxley's "Those Barren Leaves", Franz Kafka's posthumous "The Trial", Ernest Hemingway's short story collection "In Our Time", W. Somerset Maugham's "The Painted Veil", Gertrude Stein's "The Making of Americans" and Virginia Woolf's "Mrs Dalloway".

Answer: "Soldier's Pay" (William Faulkner)

William Cuthbert Faulkner was born in 1897 in the city of New Albany in northern Mississippi. Faulkner lived most of his life in Lafayette County MS, near to his birthplace, and it is this region that is the model for the fictional Yoknapatawpha County in which most of his stories are set. Falukner would later win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction twice, in 1955 for "A Fable" and for his last novel, "The Reivers", in 1963. In 1949, he became the first Mississippi-born Nobel Prize winner.

One of the few Faulkner novels not set in Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi, "Soldier's Pay" tells the story of a blinded aviator with a serious head wound returning home to a small Georgia town from WWI. The conflict between his unfaithful fiancée and the widow of a fellow aviator is central to the story.

Also published in 1926 were the three alternatives, plus Agatha Christie's "The Murder of Roger Ackroyd", Arthur Conan Doyle's "The Land of Mist", Ernest Hemingway's "The Torrents of Spring" and "The Sun Also Rises", D.H. Lawrence's "The Plumed Serpent", Vladimir Nabokov's "Mary" (written under the pseudonym V. Sirin), Dorothy L. Sayers' "Clouds of Witness"', Marquis de Sade's "Dialogue Between a Priest and a Dying Man" and A.A. Milne's "Winnie-the-Pooh".

Answer: "Elmer Gantry" (Sinclair Lewis)

Harry Sinclair Lewis was born in 1885 in the city of Sauk Centre in northwestern Minnesota. Novelist, short-story writer and playwright, in 1930 he became the first American winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature. In 1985, he was honoured by the U.S. Postal Service with a place in the "Great Americans" stamp series (on the 14-cent value).

The satirical "Elmer Gantry" followed hot on the heels of Lewis's "Main Street", "Babbitt" and "Arrowsmith". The novel examines the hypocrisy of our eponymous hero, the Reverend Gantry, who is not only a Methodist minister but also a serious drinker and a serial womanizer. Burt Lancaster won a Best Actor Oscar for his portrayal of the title character in the 1960 film adaptation of the novel.

Also published in 1927 were the three alternatives, plus Arthur Conan Doyle's "The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes", William Faulkner's "Mosquitoes", Hermann Hesse's "Steppenwolf", Franz Kafka's "Amerika", D.H. Lawrence's "John Thomas and Lady Jane", Thornton Wilder's "The Bridge of San Luis Rey", Virginia Woolf's "To the Lighthouse" and Henry Williamson's "Tarka the Otter".

Answer: "All Quiet on the Western Front" (Erich Maria Remarque)

Erich Maria Remarque was born in 1898 in the city of Osnabruck in Lower Saxony, northwest Germany. At the age of 18, in 1917, he volunteered for the German Army and was soon posted to the Western Front. He fought for six weeks before being wounded by shrapnel and he spent the rest of the war in an army hospital.

"All Quiet on the Western Front" tells the story of life during WWI from the viewpoint of a German infantry soldier Paul Baumer. This novel and its sequel, "The Road Back", published in 1930, quickly became best-sellers, but both were burned and banned by the Nazis, who designated Remarque as an enemy of the state.

Also published in 1928 were the three alternatives, plus W.E.B. Du Bois' "Dark Princess", E.M. Forster's "The Eternal Moment and Other Stories", D.H. Lawrence's "Lady Chatterley's Lover" (although it was not published in full in the UK until 1960), Vladimir Nabokov's "King, Queen, Knave" (under the pseudonym V. Sirin), Dorothy L. Sayers' "Lord Peter Views the Body", H.G. Wells' "Mr. Blettsworthy on Rampole Island", Virginia Woolf's "Orlando: A Biography", Edgar Rice Burroughs's "Tarzan, Lord of the Jungle", Felix Salten's "Bambi, A Life in the Woods" (originally published in German in 1923) and A.A. Milne's "The House at Pooh Corner".

Answer: "Cup of Gold" (John Steinbeck)

John Ernst Steinbeck Jr was born in 1902 in Salinas, the county seat of Monterey County in northern California. Acknowledged today as a giant of American literature, Steinbeck won the 1939 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for "Grapes of Wrath" and in 1962 was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.

The full title of Steinbeck's debut novel is "Cup of Gold: A Life of Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer, with Occasional Reference to History". The action follows the privateer's sacking of Panama City (the "Cup of Gold" referenced in the title).

Also published in 1928 were the three alternatives, plus Jean Cocteau's "Les Enfants Terribles", C.S. Forester's "Brown on Resolution", Joseph Goebbels' "Michael: A German Destiny in Diary Form", Dashiell Hammett's "The Dain Curse" and "Red Harvest", Ernest Hemingway's "A Farewell to Arms", Sinclair Lewis's "Dodsworth" and J.B. Priestley's "The Good Companions"