Those Scribbling Jailbirds Trivia Quiz

Answer: Thomas Paine

Thomas Paine (1737-1809) was credited by George Washington with having won the American Revolution with his "Common Sense" and "Crisis" publications. After the conflict, Paine eventually left the fledgling United States to return to England, where he began stirring up more revolutionary ideas with his "Rights of Man". Charged with treason, he fled to France, where he began feverishly fanning the flames of revolution there.

However, his hatred of monarchical systems of government waned when he saw how bloody and chaotic France's revolution had become.

He was accused of sympathy for the crown and imprisoned but he escaped trial and most likely the guillotine after the American ambassador to France, James Monroe, talked the French authorities into turning Paine over to him. Paine's American citizenship was renewed, but the incorrigible rebel published "The Age of Reason", in which he attacked institutionalized religion (including Christianity), and ruined his reputation.

He died poor and unliked, and his body, being refused burial in a Christian cemetery, was interred on his own farm.

Answer: Henry David Thoreau

During his two-year stay at Walden Pond, Thoreau spent one night in the local jail after refusing to pay his poll tax, an act of protest against the United States' war with Mexico. He felt the war was an excuse for more territory for the expansion of slavery, something he vehemently despised.

This experience inspired him to write and publish "Resistance to Civil Government" in 1849; however, the title was suspiciously changed to "Civil Disobedience" in 1866 in another publication. As legend has it, Emerson, Thoreau's mentor and friend, visited him the night of his stay in jail and asked Thoreau, "Why are you here?" Thoreau replied, "Why are you NOT here?"

Answer: Jack London

By the time London was 18, he had worked in a jute mill and a cannery as well as worked as a coal shoveler, a seaman, and a pirate who raided commercial oyster beds. Responding to the economic panic of 1893, he had also crossed much of the nation as a member of "Kelly's Army," a group of disgruntled, unemployed men from the West Coast who were planning to join "Coxey's Army" and march on Washington, D.C. "Kelly's Army" all but fizzled out, and eventually London found himself hobo-ing to New York, where he was arrested for vagrancy in 1894.

He made it back home to finish high school and enroll in the University of California.

Answer: E. E. Cummings

Cummings had been serving in the ambulance corps in France during the Great War when he and a friend began writing letters home to vent their anger and frustration about France's ineffectiveness at medical care. French officials grew irate and threw the two of them in prison.

While Cummings found this situation outrageous, he also found being thrown into prison by a people he was trying to help to be humorous. He used this experience to create his first literary success--"The Enormous Room"--a prose account published in 1922 that provided an ironic praise of the ordinary soldier and an attack on bureaucracy.

Answer: Robert Lowell

In 1943, Lowell was sentenced to one year in New York's West Street jail because he refused to support America's policies in World War II, particularly those of unconditional surrender and saturation bombing. At his sentencing, the judge berated him for injuring his family's reputation; the Lowells were an important American family whose members included the founders of Lowell Textiles in Lowell, Massachusetts (a city named for them), a judge during George Washington's administration, the poets James Russell Lowell and Amy Lowell, and the astronomer Percival Lowell (founder of Lowell Observatory). Robert Lowell was incarcerated with Lepke Buchalter, the head of the organized crime syndicate Murder Incorporated. Lowell's book of poems entitled "Life Studies" was published in 1959 and is considered one of the most influential poetical publications of the twentieth century; it brought a new level of autobiographical intensity to American poetry through its poems' confessional style.

Answer: Sir Thomas Malory

Malory's criminal record includes the plundering of various priories and abbeys, extorting money, raping, and escaping prison. Such a background certainly contradicts the chivalry he celebrates in the lengthy "Morte D'Arthur" ("The Death of Arthur"), which he wrote to while away his time during incarceration. To his credit, however, many of the charges may have been falsified or exaggerated. Malory was a soldier in the Wars of the Roses, and being on the side of the king not currently in power meant a great deal of suffering. Malory switched sides from Lancaster to York to Lancaster again, and after the failed revolt of the Lancasters during the Yorkist Edward IV's reign, Malory's name was on a legal document of Lancaster supporters not to be given exoneration by Edward IV.

Answer: Sir Walter Raleigh

King James I suspected Raleigh of opposition to his succession to the throne after Queen Elizabeth I's death, especially since he had been one of her "favorites". Raleigh was an important man to be reckoned with: he was a soldier, philosopher, poet, scientist, explorer, and colonist (remember Roanoke?).

He also had a violent temper. Following his release from prison, he led a voyage in 1617 to Guiana in search of gold, which he did not find. However, he did manage to irritate the Spanish to such an extent that they persuaded King James I to execute him.

He was beheaded in 1618.

Answer: Richard Lovelace

Lovelace fought in the English Civil Wars of the seventeenth century on the side of King Charles I. After suffering defeat, he was sent to prison by Parliament itself, which was dominated by sympathizers of the victorious Puritans. He eventually went into exile where he fought abroad as a soldier of fortune until, as fate would have it, he would be imprisoned in England once again. Upon his release, he was financially ruined and died eight years later while still in his 30's.

Answer: John Milton

John Milton was quite the radical for his time. Not only did he write pamphlets and books in support of regicide (particularly that of Charles I) but also in support of divorce on the grounds of incompatibility and of freedom of the press. He so strongly supported Puritanism and the politics of Cromwell's dictatorial Council of State, that he was appointed Cromwell's Latin Secretary.

When the Cromwellian government fell apart and Charles I's son reclaimed the throne, Milton found himself imprisoned.

He would most likely have been executed but for the pleas of friends, like the poet Andrew Marvell, who accomplished Milton's release. He still had to pay a heavy fine that cost him the majority of his property. He was depressed that his dream of a nation without a king had crumbled, but he eventually settled down to "justify the ways of God to men" in his masterpiece "Paradise Lost".

He wrote "Paradise Regained" a few years after that.

Answer: Oscar Wilde

Wilde published his only novel, "The Picture of Dorian Gray", in 1890 and then wrote a series of successful plays culminating in "The Importance of Being Earnest" in 1895. That same year Wilde unwisely began legal proceedings against Lord Alfred Douglas's father, the Marquess of Queensberry for libel.

The Marquess could defend his claim that Wilde was guilty of "sodomy" only by proving that Wilde was indeed participating in homosexual acts, which he did prove to the courts. Such behavior was a felony at the time, and criminal charges were then brought against Wilde.

He was found guilty and sentenced to prison and hard labor. After his release, his reputation in England was destroyed. He moved to Paris, where he died of cerebral meningitis in 1900 under the care of the manager of the hotel where he was staying.