I'm in Love Trivia Quiz

Answer: Lord Byron

Lord Byron was a Romantic-era English poet who became a revolutionary in the Greek War of Independence. He was well known for his relationship scandals. Lady Caroline Lamb, author of the Gothic novel "Glenarvon," called Byron "mad, bad, and dangerous to know." He was rumored to have had an affair with his half-sister Augusta Leigh, and it was suspected that he was the father of her daughter, who was named Medora.

He married the English mathematician Anne Isabella Milbanke. He was also a lover of Lady Oxford and, while in Italy, he had an affair with Teresa, Contessa Guiccioli.

Answer: Percy Bysshe Shelley

In 1811, when he was 19, Shelley eloped with Harriet Westbrook, who was 16. But he grew dissatisfied with his marriage and began spending more time away from home. In 1816, he abandoned his pregnant wife and ran off to Switzerland with the then sixteen-year-old Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, the daughter of his mentor.

While in Geneva, Mary introduced herself as "Mrs. Shelley." The poet Lord Byron joined them, and one rainy night, he proposed a ghost story contest. Mary began writing what would become "Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus." Shelley's wife Harriet was found drowned later that year, in December of 1816, and within three weeks Shelley had married Mary.

Answer: Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe married Virginia Clemm, his 13-year-old first cousin, in 1836, when he was 27. She had listed her age as 21 on the marriage register. She died of tuberculosis at the age of 24. Dying young women seemed to haunt Edgar Allan Poe's poems, including "The Raven," "Annabel Lee," and "Ligeia." Some biographers have suggested that their marriage, though loving, was possibly platonic, and that they lived more as brother and sister than as husband and wife. Poe was rumored to have been involved in amorous scandals with two female poets, Frances Sargent Osgood and Elizabeth F. Ellet.

Answer: Alexander Pope

Pott's disease (a from of tuberculosis that is seen in the vertebrae) stunted the growth of the neo-classical poet Alexander Pope and left him deformed and hunchbacked. He had several female friends, to whom he wrote regular letters, but he never married.

Some biographers have suggested that his lifelong friend Martha Blount may have been his lover. Upon his death, he left her a thousand pounds, sixty of his books, his household goods, and the furniture in his garden.

Answer: William Shakespeare

Anne Hathaway was 26 and pregnant with their first child when the 18-year-old William Shakespeare married her in 1582. She outlived him by seven years, and when he died, he made only the following bequest to her: his "second-best bed with the furniture." While some have interpreted Shakespeare's bequest to her as a slight, others argue that the bed was likely to have been their actual marriage bed (as opposed to the best bed typically used for guests).

Answer: Christina Rossetti

Christian Rossetti was engaged to James Collinson, a painter and member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, an avant-garde artistic group. But when he reverted to his Catholic faith, she (a devout Anglican), broke the engagement. Charles Cayley, a linguist, later fell in love with her, and he proposed in 1866, but she also refused to marry him for religious reasons - he was an agnostic.

Another painter, John Brett, proposed to her as well, but she also turned him down.

Answer: Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Robert Browning, a fellow poet, was impressed by Elizabeth Barrett's collection "Poems," which was published in 1844. They began a correspondence, and eventually a courtship, which was kept secret from Elizabeth's disapproving father. Mr. Barrett eschewed strangers, frequently prohibited his children from meeting with others, and refused to allow them to marry. Robert and Elizabeth married secretly and fled the country, after which she was disinherited by her father.

Answer: Sylvia Plath

Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath were married for six and a half years. She was plagued by manic depression. In the winter of 1962, Hughes left her for Assia Wevill. In February of 1963, she made sure the children were safe, and then she killed herself by sticking her head in a gas oven.

Answer: Sappho

Sappho was a Greek poet from Lesbos who lived in the 7th and 6th centuries BC. In classical Athenian comedy, Sappho was caricatured as engaging in promiscuous heterosexual sex. But by the 2nd century BC, we begin to find her sometimes associated with homosexuality, including a papyrus fragment noting that she was accused of "being irregular" and "a woman-lover." Her sexuality is still a matter of debate among historians and literary critics today, though it is widely acknowledged that her poetry does portray homoerotic feelings between women.

Answer: Gerard Manley Hopkins

In "God's Grandeur," Hopkins wrote:

"The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?"

When Hopkins decided to enter religious orders in 1868, he burned his poems in a bonfire, believing they had prevented him from dedicating himself fully to religion. He began his Jesuit novitiate that same year, and took his vows in 1870. After reading the writings of the Franciscan priest and friar, Duns Scotus, however, he decided the two callings need not be in conflict.