Literary Biographies Trivia Quiz

Answer: Bram Stoker

Bram Stoker, born in Dublin in 1847, is best remembered for one single work: the classic horror tale "Dracula". In 1878 he was chosen by the famous Shakespearean actor Henry Irving to manage the Lyceum Theatre in London, and held that position till 1902, when the theatre closed.
Stoker and Irving were not only bound by business interests, but also by a strong, lifelong friendship. It is said that Irving, with his charismatic presence, peremptory manners and tall figure, had been the model for the figure of Dracula. Nevertheless, he never consented to play the role on stage.

Celebrated Irish writers were also Samuel Beckett (1906-1989, "Waiting for Godot"); George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950, "Pygmalion"); and Oscar Wilde (1850-1900, "The Picture of Dorian Gray").

Answer: Franz Kafka

A writer himself, Max Brod (1884-1968) was Franz Kafka's friend, supporter, literary executor and biographer.
Frank Kafka was born in 1883 to a Jewish German-speaking family in Prague, a city which belonged at the time to the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Kafka's novels, such as "The Metamorphosis" (1915), or the posthumously published "The Trial" (1925) and "The Castle" (1926), have come to symbolise the angst and alienation of the modern man in a hostile and absurd world. Kafka died of tuberculosis in 1924.

Czech-born Austrian writer Franz Werfel (1890-1945) belonged to the circle of friends around Kafka and Brod. Austrian was also biographer, novelist and essayist Stephan Zweig (1881-1942). Friedrich Dürrenmatt (1921-1990, "The Visit of the Old Lady") is one of the most illustrious contemporary Swiss playwrights and novelists.

Answer: Nathaniel Hawthorne

Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864) was born in Salem, Massachusetts. When he was four years old, he lost his father, a sea captain who died of yellow fever. Between 1846 and 1848 he served as surveyor at the Salem Custom House, and he refers to that time in the preface to his masterwork, "The Scarlet Letter", published in 1850.

Three of the most acclaimed figures of American literature are also Herman Melville (1819-1891, "Moby Dick"); Mark Twain (1835-1910, "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer"); and Walt Whitman (1819-1892, "Leaves of Grass").

Answer: Sophocles

Sophocles (c. 496-406 B.C.) is one of the three great tragic dramatists of ancient Greece, together with Aeschylus, thirty years older than him, and Euripides, fifteen years younger.
His life is surrounded by countless myths, so the facts are not always clearly distinguished from legend.
Although he completed over 120 tragedies, only 7 have survived, such as "Antigone", his earliest, "Oedipus the King", his finest, "Oedipus at Colonus", his last.
Sophocles is generally considered the greatest of the three dramatists. He was a theatrical innovator: added a third actor, increased the chorus, eliminated the trilogic form (i.e. three tragedies to tell one single story), making every tragedy an autonomous entity, and improved stage scenery by introducing scene painting.

Aristophanes was a Greek comedy writer (445-385 B.C., "The Birds").

Answer: Charles Dickens

Victorian writer Charles Dickens was born in Portsmouth in 1812. When his father John was imprisoned for debts, the family (a usual practice at that time) moved with him at Marshalsea, a debtor's prison in London.
In order to support them financially, 12-year old Charles was sent to work, 10 hours a day, to a shoe-blacking factory. That was a devastating time for young Charles, left to live alone and in great poverty, and the inhuman conditions under which working-class lived during the "industrial revolution" became a pervasive theme in his literary work. "David Copperfield" is considered his most autobiographic novel.

Daniel Defoe (1660-1732, "Robinson Crusoe"); Jonathan Swift (1667-1745, "Gulliver's Travels"); and William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-1863, "Vanity Fair") are among the most prominent British novelists.

Answer: Honore de Balzac

Although physically unattractive, French writer Honoré de Balzac (1799-1850) had several famous love affairs. His epistolary liaison with Polish Countess Evelina Hanska began in 1832, when she sent him a letter, expressing her admiration for his work. At that time, the Countess was married to an elderly man. After meeting the first time, Balzac and the Countess agreed to marry after her husband's death.
They conducted a voluminous and romantic correspondence, and sporadically met, for 18 years. They got married in 1850, three months before the writer died.
Balzac's magnum opus is "La Comédie Humaine" (The Human Comedy), a monumental collection of 94 novels and short stories, which contains over 2,000 characters from every social class, and is a brilliant portrait of the French society of his time. Among the chief novels in "La Comédie humaine" are "Eugenie Grandet" (1833) and "Le Père Goriot" (1835).

Notable French writers were also Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867, "Flowers of Evil"); Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880, "Madame Bovary"); and Voltaire (1694-1778, "Candide").

Answer: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of the master detective "Sherlock Holmes", was born in Edinburgh in 1859. He was educated at the Royal Infirmary in Edinburgh, and in 1881 he received his medical degree. In 1890 he abandoned his medical career and fully concentrated on writing, creating some of the most memorable detective stories, such as "The Hound of the Baskervilles". He was knighted in 1902.

Robert Burns (1759-1796) is Scotland's national bard. Also Scottish were Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832, "Ivanhoe") and Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894, "Treasure Island").

Answer: Maya Angelou

Maya Angelou was born Marguerite Johnson in 1928 in St. Louis, Missouri. Author, poet, songwriter, dancer, singer, performer etc., during the Sixties she was also active in the African-American political movement. She spent some years in Ghana working as feature editor for "The African Review".
She wrote six autobiographical volumes (1970-2002), beginning with "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings", and has also published several collections of poetry. Maya Angelou achieved a large popularity when she read her poem "On the Pulse of Morning" at the inauguration of President Clinton in 1993.

Former poet laureate of the United States, Rita Dove was born in 1952. Her most famous work is "Thomas and Beulah". Toni Morrison, born in 1931, was the first black woman to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature. Alice Walker (1944) is especially famous for her novel "The Color Purple".

Answer: Pablo Neruda

Pablo Neruda was born Neftalí Ricardo Reyes Baso in 1904 in Parral, Chile. His mother died when he was still a child. His father strongly disapproved of his literary ambitions, so he started writing in his teens under the pseudonym Pablo Neruda, the name he legally assumed twenty years later.
He not only created sensuous and passionate compositions, such as the collection "Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair", but also social, political and anthropologic poetry, like his great epic "Canto General", a hymn to the history, geography, flora and fauna of South America.
Because of his active left-wing political engagement, he was banished from Chile, and lived from 1948 till 1952 in exile. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1971.

Argentine Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986), Mexican Octavio Paz (1914-1998), and Uruguayan Horacio Quiroga (1878-1937) are among the most celebrated Latin American writers.

Answer: Astrid Lindgren

Swedish author Astrid Lindgren (1907-2002) wrote "Pippi Longstocking" and other popular books whose characters, independent, rebellious and nonconformist, differed radically from the traditional childrens literature.
She was also an active advocate of children's rights and animal welfare.
Her famous statement: "Every pig is entitled to a happy pig life", written in 1988 in an open letter to Prime Minister Ingvar Carlsson, helped to pass a law which considerably improved the life of farm animals. The law is known as "Lex Astrid".
For her commitment to children and animal rights, she received in 1994 the "Right Livelihood", considered an alternative Nobel prize.

Swedish Selma Lagerlöf (1858-1940, "The Wonderful Adventures of Nils Holgersson") was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize for Literature. Also a Nobel Prize Laureate was Norwegian Sigrid Undset (1882-1940, "Kristin Lavransdatter"). Danish author Karen Blixen (1885-1962, "Out of Africa") wrote under several "noms de plume", such as Tania Blixen and Isak Andersen.

Answer: Miguel de Cervantes

Miguel de Cervantes, author of "Don Quixote", is Spain's greatest literary figure. Born in Alcalá de Henares, near Madrid, in 1547, he lived a life full of adventures.
He fought against the Turks at the Battle of Lepanto in 1571, where he was wounded and permanently lost the use of his left hand. On his journey back to Spain in 1575, he was captured by pirates, was taken to Algiers and imprisoned for five years, until Trinitarian friars and his family could pay the large sum of money requested for his ransom. That experience was a key event in his life, and the themes of freedom and captivity often appeared in his work.

Memorable Spanish writers are also Pedro Calderón de la Barca (1600-1681, "Life is a Dream"); Lope de Vega (1562-1635, "Fuente Ovejuna"); Federico García Lorca (1898-1936, "The House of Bernarda Alba").

Answer: Christopher Marlowe

Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593) is considered the most eminent English dramatist before William Shakespeare. His most acclaimed dramas are "Tamburlaine the Great" (c.1587), "Dr. Faustus" (c.1588) and "The Jew of Malta" (c.1589).
The circumstances of his death are mysterious. Although certified that he was stabbed by a drunken man in self-defence, some scholars see his death as a consequence of a plot, due to Marlowe's alleged activities as a government spy.
Since William Shakespeare began publishing his dramas shortly after his death, Christopher Marlowe has been proposed as the possible, real author of Shakespeare's work. The so-called "Marlovian theory" has many supporters.

Elizabethan dramatists were also Ben Jonson (1572-1637 "Volpone") and Thomas Kyd (1558-1594, "The Spanish Tragedy"). Geoffrey Chaucer (1340-1400) is the author of "The Canterbury Tales".

Answer: George Sand

George Sand was the pseudonym of Amandine Lucie Aurore Dupin. Born in 1804 in Paris, she had an austere education at Nohant, her grandmother's country estate. After entering a convent, she returned home, and led a nonconformist life, wearing male clothes, for example, as a sign of her rebellion against social norms.
After a marriage of convenience, she left the countryside and went with her two children to Paris, where she obtained a divorce in 1836.
She wrote about 80 novels, and was an active feminist, demanding for women the same freedom of decision allowed to men.
Famous are her liaisons with the poet Alfred De Musset and the composer and pianist Frédéric Chopin. In the hope it would improve the composer's health, George Sand and Chopin spent together a winter in a Carthusian Monastery on the Spanish island Majorca.

French women writers were also Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette (1873-1954, "Gigi"); Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986, "The Second Sex"); and Anne-Louise-Germaine Necker, Madame de Stael (1766-1817, "Germany").

Answer: Friedrich von Schiller

One of the most illustrious German literary figures, Friedrich von Schiller (1759-1805) was a dramatist, poet and historian.
He studied medicine and became, by order of the Duke of Württemberg, an army surgeon. He abhorred military life, though, and fled "abroad", to Mannheim, where he adopted a new name and worked as a dramatist at the Mannheim Theatre.
He wrote some of the most famous works in history of dramatic literature, such as "Don Carlos" and "Wallenstein", considered his masterpiece.

Illustrious German writers were also Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832, "Faust"); Heinrich Heine 1797-1856 "Book of Songs"); and Novalis (1772-1801, "Heinrich of Ofterdingen").

Answer: George Orwell

George Orwell, pen name of Eric Blair, was born in 1903. He is especially celebrated for two satirical novels: "1984" and "Animal Farm".
A committed Socialist, he went to Spain in 1936 to report on the Spanish Civil War. He soon became a member of the Marxist-Leninist, anti-Stalinist P.O.U.M. Party (Partito Obrero de Unificacion), and joined in its fight against the Nationalist Army.
During a battle in the front lines, near Huesca, he was hit by a bullet which passed through his neck. As a result, his left side remained paralysed.
He wrote about the events of the Spanish Civil War in his "Homage to Catalonia".

The other choices: D.H. Lawrence (1885-1930, "Lady Chatterley's Lover"); Aldous Huxley (1894-1963, "Brave New World"); Joseph Conrad (1857-1924, "Heart of Darkness").

Answer: Giovanni Boccaccio

Giovanni Boccaccio (author of "The Decameron") was born in 1313. He regularly travelled with his father on business, and in 1327, he followed him to Naples. There he first studied accounting and law, then he focussed on classical and literary subjects. He started writing poetry, attended the Neapolitan nobility and became a welcome guest at the court of Robert d'Anjou, the king of Naples. There he met and fell in love with a gentlewoman whom he would celebrate later as Fiammetta.

Dante Alighieri's muse (1265-1321, "Divine Comedy") was Beatrice; Francesco Petrarch (1304-1374, "Il Canzoniere") was devoted to Laura. Dante's Friend, poet Guido Cavalcanti (1255-1300) was one of the major figures of the literary movement "Dolce Stil Novo".

Answer: Fyodor Dostoevsky

Fyodor Dostoevsky was born in 1821 in Moscow. His liberal ideals made him join a group of utopian socialists who published pamphlets against the government and the Russian monarchy. He was arrested and sentenced to death. After a mock execution, in the very last minute the sentence was commuted to prison. He spent four years of hard labour in a Siberian penal camp, and during that devastating time his health suffered greatly. Among his most celebrated works are: "Notes From The Underground" (1864), "Crime and Punishment" (1866), and "The Idiot" (1868).

Eminent Russian writers were also Nikolai Gogol (1809-1852, "Dead Souls"); Aleksandr Pushkin (1799-1837, "Eugene Onegin"); Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910, "War and Peace").

Answer: Margaret Mitchell

Margaret Mitchell wrote only one novel, but it became one of the most popular of all time: "Gone with the Wind", with over 30 million copies sold.
She was born in 1900 in Atlanta. In 1922, she started a job at the "Atlanta Journal Sunday Magazine" and worked there four years.
She wrote many articles, interviews, reviews of books, until a broken leg ended her journalist career. While she was convalescing, she began working on "Gone with the Wind". The novel was published in 1932.

The other choices are three of the most beloved women writers: Louisa May Alcott (1832-1888, "Little Women"); Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896, "Uncle Tom's Cabin); and Sylvia Plath (1932-1963, "Colossus").

Answer: Ovid

Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso, 43 B.C.-18 A.D.) is especially known for his "Ars amatoria" (the Art of Love), a handbook about seduction in three volumes, two for men and one for women.
In his lifetime he was a very prolific and popular author, until he was mysteriously banished from Rome.
The reasons behind the emperor Augustus' decision are undiscovered. The most plausible is that he had an affair with the emperor's grand-daughter Julia (also banished that year). He languished in exile until his death.

All other choices are Roman poets too: Virgil (70 B.C.-19 B.C.), Horace (65 B.C.- 8 B.C.) and Catullus (84 B.C.-54 B.C.)

Answer: Heinrich Boll

German Heinrich Böll (1917-1985), novelist, critic and moralist, attacked the brutalities of the Nazi era in his early novels, and later the materialistic attitude of post-war Germany. Among his most notable novels are "Billiards at Half Past Nine" (1959), "The Clown (1963), and "Group Portrait With a Lady" (1971).
He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1972.
He and his wife lived in Cologne, but they spent much time on Achill Island off the Irish west coast. He recorded his experiences in his book "Irish Journal". Their cottage is now a museum.

Three of the most important figures of modern German literature are Hermann Hesse (1877-1962, "Siddharta"); Thomas Mann (1875-1955, "The Magic Mountain"); and Erich Maria Remarque (1898-1970, "All Quiet on the Western Front").