The Beginning of a Classic Trivia Quiz

Answer: "Mutiny on the Bounty" by James Norman Hall and Charles Nordhoff

James Norman Hall was browsing in a Paris bookshop in 1916 when the idea of making a novel out of the mutiny aboard the H.M.S. Bounty in 1787 occurred to him. He shared this idea with a fellow American flying for France in the Lafayette Escadrille, Charles Nordhoff, and thus 'Mutiny on the Bounty' was written. 'Pitcairn's Island' relates the fate of the mutineers, outward bound from Tahiti, and 'Men Against the Sea' follows Captain Bligh on his 3600-mile voyage. 'Falcons of France' was a memorial of the First World War in which both the authors served and was the first novel they wrote together.

Answer: "Kidnapped" by Robert Stevenson

Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson (1850-1894) was born in Scotland and though he travelled widely, his love for and understanding of his native country is evident in 'Kidnapped' and the sequel 'David Balfour'. The story tells about orphaned David Balfour who goes through all the deep waters imaginable to claim what is heretically his. 'Treasure Island' has the same sense of adventure revolving around the experiences of Jim Hawkins, Long John Silver and the dead man's chest. Stevenson's inspiration for 'Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde', the classic struggle between good and evil, came in a nightmare. Fannie (Osbourne), his wife, was terrified that he was having a seizure or a fit and nearly gave grounds for divorce when she woke him.

Answer: "The Last of the Mohicans" by James Cooper

James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851) was the son of the judge who founded Cooperstown, New York. Accordingly, Cooper grew up in a wealthy home, attended Yale, served in the United States Navy and settled down to be a country gentleman. He allegedly started his writing career at thirty when he threw an English novel aside and told his wife that he could write a better book.

She dared him to and the result was eighty novels, starting with 'Precaution'. Five of them star the character Hawk-eye a.k.a. Natty Bummpo first written of in 'The Last of the Mohicans', namely 'The Deerslayer', 'The Pathfinder', 'The Pioneers' and 'The Prairie'. Mark Twain accused Cooper of breaking 'eighteen of the nineteen rules governing literary art', but yet Victor Hugo and Joseph Conrad are among the members of Cooper's fan club.

Answer: "The Coral Island" by R.M. Ballantyne

Robert Michael Ballentyne (1825-1894) worked as a clerk for the Hudson's Bay Company between 1841 and 1847, after completing his education at the Edinburg Academy, at the Red River Settlement in Canada. This provided him with the inspiration for his first novel, 'The Young Fur Traders' (1856), which was successful enough to trigger a series of adventure stories. Most of his heroes were romantic and chivalric and all his novels echo the Victorian sentiments of loyalty to the British empire.

He published about eighty novels and the most noteworthy include 'The Coral Island' (1858), 'Martin Rattler' (1859), 'The Dog Crusoe' (1861), 'The Gorilla Hunters' (1862) and 'Black Ivory' (1873). 'The Coral Island' inspired William Golding to write 'The Lord of the Flies', which starts with the sentence 'The boy with the fair hair lowered himself down the last few feet of rock and began to pick his way towards the lagoon.'. Golding decided that boys would not play nicely if stranded on an island and wrote his classic to prove this thought.

Answer: "The Devil's Wager" by W.M. Thackeray

William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-1863) was born in Calcutta, India. After the death of his father, his mother quickly remarried to an old friend in the British army and Thackeray was sent, at the age of six, to be educated in England. He never returned to India.

As a freelance journalist, a career he chose in 1832 after abandoning law, he contributed to various magazines and journals (e.g. 'Fraser's Magazine', 'Punch', 'The Times', the 'Globe', the 'Westminster Review', the 'Corsair') due to lack of money.

In 1835, having moved to Paris, he started studying painting. The last complete novel he wrote was not a large success and Thackeray had started on 'Denis Duval' before dying suddenly in December 1863.

Answer: "A Floating City" by Jules Verne

Jules Gabriel Verne, born in Nantes in 1828 and died in Amines in 1905, ran away to be a cabin boy on a merchant ship. He was returned to his parents shortly after.Verne was sent, in 1847, to Paris to study law, but here his passion for theatre grew and in 1850 he published his first play.

His father cut off his allowance when Verne decided not to continue with law and Verne was forced to make money by selling his stories. After studying geology, engineering and astrology, he wrote 'Five Weeks in A Balloon' (1863), 'A Journey to the Centre of the Earth' (1864), 'From the Earth to the Moon' (1866), 'A Floating City' (1867), 'Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea' (1870), 'Around the World In Eighty Days' (1873), 'Mysterious Island' (1874) and 'Master of the World' (1904).

Answer: "The Three Musketeers" by Alexandre Dumas

Alexandre Dumas (1802-1870) was born in Villers-Cotteręts in the northern regions of France. After being a clerk in a local law firm for a few years, he moved to Paris in 1823. He started to write plays in 1825, moving on to novels in the 1840s. His son, Alexandre Dumas the younger, is also sometimes known as Alexandre Dumas fils (French for son) , also wrote novels and plays. 'The Lady of the Camelias' (circa 1848) was his most successful novel, translated into the play 'Camille' and performed for the first time in 1852.

Answer: "Anna Karenina" by Leo Tolstoy

Count Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy (imagine his driver's license!) was born in 1828 at Yasnaya Polyana in the Tula province and lived a life of leisure until he joined an artillery regiment in Caucasus in 1851. The Crimean war and defence of Sevastopol inspired 'The Sevastopol Stories', establishing his reputation.

He married Sophie Andreyevna Behrs in 1862 and the fifteen years that followed was blissful - they had thirteen children and Tolstoy wrote 'War and Peace' (1865-1868), 'Anna Karenin' (1874-1876) and 'A Confession' (1879-1882).

In 1910 he died, dramatically fleeing from home after being excommunicated by the Russian holy synod, at the tiny railway station at Astapovo.

Answer: "Romeo and Juliet" by William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare (April 1564-April 1616) was born to a glover and a farmer's daughter with distant aristocratic connections. Since he was only educated at a grammar school and never entered one of the universities, some of his contemporaries claimed that he lacked sufficient learning to write his own plays and poems.

They were proved wrong when his first narrative poem, 'Venus and Adonis', went into seven editions between 1593 and 1602! Somewhere in the early 1590s he wrote 'The Two Gentlemen of Verona', starting with Valentine's line 'Cease to persuade, my loving Proteus, home-keeping youth have ever homely wits' and ending with the same character saying 'Come, Proteus, 'tis your penance, but to hear the story of your loves discovered - that done, our day of marriage shall be yours, one feast, one house, one mutual happiness'. 'Romeo and Juliet', one of his most memorable plays, was written in 1595 and ends with Escalus, prince of Verona saying 'Some shall be pardoned and some punished, for never was a story of more woe than this of Juliet and her Romeo. 'Hamlet, Prince of Denmark' followed five years after as the first of Shakespeare's great tragedies and starts with the officer Bernado asking 'Who's there?' and ends with Fortinbras, prince of Norway commanding 'Go, bid the soldiers shoot'. Roderigo's line, 'Never tell me, I take it much unkindly that thou, Iago, who hast had my purse as if the strings were thine, shouldst know of this' starts 'Othello, the Moor of Venice' (1602-1604) and Lodovico's line, 'Myself with straight aboard and to the state this heavy act with heavy heart relate', ends it.

Answer: "Middlemarch" by George Eliot

Mary Ann (Marian) Evans (1819-1880) used the pseudonym 'George Eliot' for her numerous essays, novels, reviews and articles because writing was then considered to be a male profession only. She was born in Chilvers Coton, Warwickshire and the family moved to Griff when a few months old.

The 'cheerful red-brick, ivory-covered house' and the people whom she lived among for twenty-one years would later surface in and inspire her heroes and novels. Though she was mainly educated at home, Evans was sent to several schools. Following the death of her mother in 1836, she took charge of the household and after her father's death in 1849, she settled in London and worked as subeditor of the 'Westminster Review'.

Her first novel, 'Adam Bede', followed her first collection of tales, 'Scenes of Clerical life' (1858). Evans had great literary success and amongst the members of her fan club are Virginia Woolf, who described 'Middlemarch' as 'the magnificent book which for all its imperfections is one of the few English novels written for grown-up people'.