Who Created Me in the Nineteenth Century? Quiz

Answer: Jane Austen

Jane Austen published 'Emma' in December of 1815 (clearly slightly in advance of plans, as the title page said 1816). Emma is introduced as "handsome, clever and rich"; she is also spoiled, self-indulgent, and prone to meddle in the affairs of others (especially in the line of matchmaking). She is well-intentioned, but her inexperience and overconfidence lead her to make some rash choices. Don't worry, it is all sorted by the end.

The novels of Jane Austen have been popular as the source of a number of movies and televised series, both historical costume dramas and more contemporary adaptations. While the direct adaptations of 'Emma' have not been as popular as some of the others, especially 'Pride and Prejudice', the modern adaptation of 'Clueless', set in Beverly Hills, was highly successful.

Answer: Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens's first novel, 'The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club', was published in 1836. It was published in instalments, and had not been terribly successful until Sam Weller appeared in Chapter 10. A wisecracking street-smart cockney, he introduced a comic element that was to become typical of Dickens's work. The central figure, Samuel Pickwick, takes Sam on as his personal valet, to accompany the group in their travels Sam Weller introduced a comic trope called a wellerism, in which a familiar proverb is delivered by a speaker in an inappropriate situation. For example, "'That's the pint, sir,' interposed Sam; 'out vith it, as the father said to his child, when he swallowed a farden'." (Removing the attempt to convey a cockney accent, "'That's the point, sir,' interposed Sam; 'out with it, as the father said to his child, when he swallowed a farthing'.")

Charles Dickens could have appeared many more times in this quiz, as he created a number of memorable characters. I chose Sam as being the first, but others would have been easily recognised: David Copperfield, Oliver Twist, Fagin, Miss Haversham, Pip, Abel Magwitch, Mr Micawber, Uriah Heep, Scrooge, Tiny Tim, ...

Answer: James Fenimore Cooper

Nathaniel 'Natty' Bumppo was a central figure in the five novels collectively called 'The Leatherstocking Tales'. He was introduced in 'The Pioneers' (1823), but will be more familiar from his appearance in 'The Last of the Mohicans' (1826 and 'The Deerslayer' (1841). He was raised by Delaware Indians, and his tracking skills and love of the wilderness which is disappearing under the advance of European colonisation of North America originate in that time. He is often accompanied by his foster brother Chingachgook (who becomes a Mohican chief) and Chingachgook's son Uncas (who was the last pure-blood Mohican to be born, according to the books).

James Fenimore Cooper had published two novels before 'The Pioneers', neither terribly successful. the first was 'Precaution', a novel of manners reminiscent of Jane Austen. The second was a spy story set in the American Revolution, titled 'The Spy: A Tale of the Neutral Ground'. Although he wrote prolifically, few of his works outside 'The Leatherstocking Tales' had a lasting reputation in the literary world.

Answer: Nathaniel Hawthorne

'The Scarlet Letter: A Romance' (1850) relates the story of Hester Prynne, a woman who has conceived an illegitimate daughter and who is forced by the Puritan society in which she lives to wear a large red letter A on her clothes, to identify her as an adulteress. Add into the mix a long-believed-dead husband returning with a new name and a desire for revenge and the minister who is consumed with guilt over the affair which he has not the courage to admit in public, and there is plenty of tension to work out!

Nathaniel Hawthorne (who changed the spelling of his surname to distance himself from his great-great-grandfather John Hathorne, one of the judges in the infamous Salem witch trials of 1692-3) set most of his work in New England, and generally took a strong anti-Puritan stance in his tales. Guilt (of the individual and inherited from ancestors) and an exploration of the nature of evil formed major themes in most of his writing, but not in the biography he wrote of a close personal friend, Franklin Pierce, who was running for President. During the Pierce administration, Hawthorne served as the US consul in Liverpool.

Answer: Herman Melville

While Ishmael is not the central figure of Melville's masterpiece, 'Moby-Dick; or, The Whale', he does narrate it, and features in the famous opening line: "Call me Ishmael". Ishmael is a wanderer (as suggested by the Biblical reference in his name) who signs on for a whaling trip which turns out to be a quest for revenge by Captain Ahab on the whale that had been responsible for the loss of his lower leg in a previous encounter. The novel's length comes from the fact that it includes, as well as the chapters driving the narrative, extensive accounts of life on a whaling ship at the time and reflections on social structures and philosophy, as Ismael seeks to make sense of his world.

Herman Melville was a strong admirer of Nathaniel Hawthorne, whom he met while in the early stages of writing 'Moby-Dick', and dedicated the novel to him.

Answer: Louisa May Alcott

The novel 'Little Women', published in two volumes in 1868 and 1869, is a semi-autobiographical novel following the lives of four sisters living with their mother while their father is away serving as a pastor to Union troops during the American Civil War. Many of the elements of setting and characterisation can be readily identified with the Alcott family, but it is a work of fiction, which achieved instant and lasting success. The first volume, covers a year from the opening Christmas to the following one, when their father returns, is the portion most commonly used for movie adaptations, as it has a nice structural unity. The second volume, which was published separately in the United Kingdom under the title 'Good Wives', sees the girls maturing and starting families of their own.

Subsequently, the story was continued in 'Little Men, or Life at Plumfield with Jo's Boys' (1871) and 'Jo's Boys, and How They Turned Out: A Sequel to "Little Men"' (1886), both of which focus on Jo and her family.

Answer: Jules Verne

Captain Nemo is the assumed name of Prince Dakkar, son of an Indian Raja who is a scientific genius, roaming the seas in his electrically-propelled submarine named Nautilus. His assumed name, which means Nobody in Latin, is also the name that Odysseus used for himself in his encounter with the cyclops Polyphemus in Homer's 'Odyssey'. The prince has withdrawn from the world, in disgust at the way imperialism seems to rule. He seems to be driven both by a desire for revenge for the deaths of his wife and children and by a need to shelter himself emotionally by focussing on marine biology, among other areas of interest.

In 'Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea' (1870), the narrator is part of a search to locate a mysterious underwater object which turns out to be Nautilus. He then accompanies Nemo on a lengthy underwater journey: at the time of writing, Verne would have understood a league to be equivalent to 4 kilometres, so they travelled 80,000 km, or around 50,000 miles. This is about twice the equatorial circumference of the earth. This journey ends in the apparent loss of the Nautilus, but in 'The Mysterious Island' (1874) it is revealed that it survived the maelstrom, and has been continuing the voyage. Nemo helps save the five stranded Americans, and tells them of his life. This, rather than the more famous first appearance, is the source of most of our information about the past and motivations of Captain Nemo. In fact, the first book originally had him identified as a Polish noble whose family had been killed by Russians in the January Uprising, but with few details provided. The publisher insisted on a change of nationality, to avoid offending the Russians, both a political ally and a promising market for book sales. Due to his enigmatic nature, it didn't take much changing!

Answer: Leo Tolstoy

While 'War and Peace' (1869) may be a more familiar title to many than 'Anna Karenina', this 1878 novel by Leo Tolstoy was the one he considered his first true novel, and it often appears in lists of the greatest Russian novels. It describes the affair between Anna, wife of a count and government officer who is twenty years her senior, and the dashing young cavalry officer Count Vronsky.

The novel opens with the famous sentence, "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." There are a number of unhappy relationships explored in the book, although most of them are not technically families, since the participants are not married (at least, not to each other).

The trains which figure so regularly help to create a sense of the tensions between old and new, city and country, faith and doubt, and foreshadow Anna's ultimate fate.

Answer: Robert Louis Stevenson

Ah, 'Treasure Island', the main source of information about pirates for many a child! It was originally published in a children's magazine in serial form, credited to Captain George North, under the title 'Treasure Island, or the mutiny of the Hispaniola', and appeared in book form in 1883. This coming-of-age novel describes the adventures of young Jim Hawkins as he becomes involved with guests at his mother's inn, and joins in the search for buried treasure during which he encounters the villainous 'Long John' Silver, a one-legged cook with a parrot on his shoulder and a lust for buried treasure.

As well as Jim Hawkins, Squire Trelawney, Captain Smollett, Ben Gunn and Long John Silver, Robert Louis Stevenson also wrote the memorable characters of Dr Henry Jekyll and Edward Hyde, in 'Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde' (1886) and David Balfour, in 'Kidnapped' (1886), whose complete title in its first edition was 'Kidnapped: Being Memoirs of the Adventures of David Balfour in the Year 1751: How he was Kidnapped and Cast away; his Sufferings in a Desert Isle; his Journey in the Wild Highlands; his acquaintance with Alan Breck Stewart and other notorious Highland Jacobites; with all that he Suffered at the hands of his Uncle, Ebenezer Balfour of Shaws, falsely so-called: Written by Himself and now set forth by Robert Louis Stevenson'.

Answer: Mark Twain

We first met Huck in 'The Adventures of Tom Sawyer' (1876), but in the sequel, 'Adventures of Huckleberry Finn' (1884) he is the narrator, whose history and character are revealed in the course of events. This is also the case for two later novels, 'Tom Sawyer Abroad' (1894), a story reminiscent of the adventure stories of Jules Verne, and 'Tom Sawyer, Detective' (1896). 'Adventures of Huckleberry Finn' has been called the Great American Novel, and it is an exciting adventure story, but it has often been criticised for what seem to be racist attitudes and coarse vocabulary. Most scholars however, believe that Twain intends to satirise those racist attitudes, and wants to portray realistically the mannerisms of those living along the Mississippi at the time when the novel was set.

The escaped slave, Jim, who accompanies Huck, is a far more intelligent and upright character than most of the other people we meet, despite the fact that his lack of education sometimes leads him to make comical mistakes.