Only 'Once Upon A Time...' Trivia Quiz

Answer: Ross Lockridge Jr.

Ross Lockridge Jr. wrote "Raintree County", which has been called one of "Great American Novels". It was published in 1948 and topped the New York Times Best-Seller list. In 1957 it was adapted into an MGM movie, set during the American Civil War, starring Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift.
Aside from the film, another sad ending: three months after the publication of "Raintree County", Lockridge, who had suffered from depression, committed suicide.

Answer: John Kennedy Toole

John Kennedy Toole (1937-1969) wrote the picaresque novel "A Confederacy of Dunces", whose protagonist, Ignatius J. Reilly, was an obese, self-styled scholar who still lived at home with his mother. It is notable for its accurate representation of New Orleans dialects. The novel, rejected during his life, was published years after his suicide and, in 1981, Toole was posthumously awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

While Toole did write another novel, "The Neon Bible", when he was 16, he dismissed it as "adolescent" and never submitted it for publication. The only reason it was published in 1989 was because of the success of "A Confederacy of Dunces".

Answer: Ralph Ellison

Considered one of the great novels of the 20th century, "Invisible Man" was published in 1952 and won the US National Book Award for Fiction the following year. The book is about racial alienation; it describes an African-American man whose color renders him imperceptible to the eye.

In 1967 a fire at Ellison's home destroyed the manuscript for his second uncompleted novel. He died in 1994. While Ralph Ellison did write another novel, "Juneteenth", it was unfinished at the time of his death.

Answer: Margaret Mitchell

Margaret wrote her only novel, "Gone with the Wind", about Atlanta during the Civil War. The novel was published in 1936, won a Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1938, and was made into a movie in 1939. Mitchell didn't like the attention she received from the novel and refused to write a sequel. In 1949 she was struck by a car and killed in Atlanta, Georgia.

Answer: J.D. Salinger

"The Catcher in the Rye" was published in 1951. It became the classic novel describing teenage angst and alienation, with Holden Caulfield as the tragic hero. Unfortunately the fame seemed to lead Salinger to become a recluse. He did write other short stories and a novella "Franny and Zooey" in 1961, but nothing to compare with his one and only novel. Salinger died in 2010.

Answer: Sylvia Plath

Sylvia Plath wrote the semi-autobiographical novel "The Bell Jar" originally under the pseudonym 'Victoria Lucas'. The novel was published in 1963; sadly, less than three months later Plath committed suicide.

Answer: Oscar Wilde

You can probably name several works by Oscar Wilde, e.g., "The Importance of Being Earnest", but his scripts were written as plays. His only novel was "The Picture of Dorian Gray", published in book form in 1891. It is a philosophical novel about Dorian Gray, a young handsome man who is the muse of the artist Basil Hallward who paints a full portrait of his subject. Hallward also introduces Dorian to Lord Henry Wooten and Wooten's hedonistic view of life. Dorian does the "Faust" thing and sells his soul so that he can remain young and beautiful, while his portrait shows all the sins he's committed.

Answer: Emily Bronte

In 1847, Emily Bronte wrote the romantic story of Heathcliff and Catherine in "Wuthering Heights" under the pen name Ellis Bell. A year after the novel was published, at the age of 30, Bronte died of tuberculosis which had developed from a severe cold she caught while attending her brother Branwell's funeral.

Answer: Boris Pasternak

Boris Pasternak (1890-1960) was a Russian author who wrote books of verse. In 1957, his only novel, "Doktor Zhivago", was published in Italy. The story takes place during the Russian Revolution and is about the romance between a young doctor, Yuri Zhivago and the beautiful girl, Lara Guishar, with whom he falls in love.

The following year Pasternak was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. He was later forced to decline the prize by the authorities of his country.

Answer: Anna Sewell

Anna Sewell's classic children's novel about the mistreatment of animals was published in 1877, when she was 57 years old. The book was written during the last years of Sewell's life while she was confined to her bed, and Sewell died just five months after the novel's publication.