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Structure
Interesting Questions, Facts and Information
- There are a total of 125 general entries. We are selecting 30 for display.
Special Topics
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 Interesting Questions, Facts, and Information
 Authors and their Works
| You're almost done! So pat yourself on the back and answer one last question: what was the name of the man who wrote the 'Divine Comedy' which included the famous 'Inferno'? | Literature and Authors
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Dante. It was Dante Alighieri.
Scopes monkey trial. John Scopes, the teacher tried for teaching evolution to his 1920s class, may not actually have taught evolution to his class.
| Whose 'On the Origin of Species' began a debate between science and religion that is still going on today? | Literature and Authors
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Charles Darwin. Darwin gained the information supporting evolution by natural selection from his voyage on the H.M.S. Beagle. Some consider this scientific theory to be contrary to their religious beliefs.
Roald Dahl. Also authored 'Charlie And the Chocolate Factory' and 'James And The Giant Peach', he was married to actress Patricia Neal.
| What Shakespearean play is parodied in a scene in the Arnold Schwarzenegger flop 'Last Action Hero', widely criticized as rotten? | Literature and Authors
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Hamlet. 'Hamlet' is given an action-movie treatment in this scene near the beginning: 'Something is rotten in the state of Denmark -- and Prince Hamlet is taking out the trash.'
| Who wrote the mock heroic poem 'Ode on the Death of a Favorite Cat, Drowned in a Tub of Goldfishes'? | Literature and Authors
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| What member of the Quiche people in Guatemala won the Nobel Peace Prize in part for her autobiography? | Literature and Authors
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Rigoberta Menchu. In the last year, there has been a controversy as to whether her autobiography, 'I, Rigoberta Menchu' was fictionalized.
| What famous children's book did L. Frank Baum write -- a book that would become the first of a series of fourteen? | Literature and Authors
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The Wizard of Oz . 'The Wonderful Wizard of Oz' -- usually reprinted under the name 'The Wizard of Oz' -- was the first of 14 Oz novels written by Baum.
| About whom did Abraham Lincoln say, 'So this is the little lady who started the big war'? | Literature and Authors
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Harriet Beecher Stowe. Stowe's 'Uncle Tom's Cabin', published in the 1850s before the Civil War, inflamed the North and infuriated the South.
| In what language did Lope de Vega, one of the most prolific playwrights of all time, write his plays? | Literature and Authors
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Spanish . De Vega was a contemporary of Miguel Cervantes, who wrote 'Don Quixote.'
King James I of Great Britain. The Puritans were anxious for a less Catholic edition of the Bible, and King James I agreed, and ordered a committee of scholars to produce a new translation. (He was King James I of Britain, and before that James VI of Scotland.)
| What play, starring a character named Viola, is William Shakespeare depicted as beginning at the END of the movie 'Shakespeare in Love' (NOT during the rest of the movie)? | Literature and Authors
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Twelfth Night. The movie alleges that the character of Viola in 'Twelfth Night' was inspired by Viola de Lessups, Shakespeare's movie love interest.
The Iliad . The Iliad is the story of the clash of heroes at the end of the Trojan War.
Guenter Grass. Guenter Grass wrote about many Germans' refusal to face the facts of the Holocaust in their literature.
| Who won a Nobel Prize for his novel 'Dr. Zhivago', but was forced by the Soviet government to turn it down? | Literature and Authors
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Boris Pasternak . Pasternak was very disappointed by those orders.
Geoffrey Chaucer. Chaucer's 'The Canterbury Tales' helped define the Middle English language, much as Dante Alighieri's 'Divine Comedy' did for Italian.
Nordhoff and Hall. Along with Pitcairn island', this was part of the 'Mutiny on the Bounty' trilogy
Thornton Wilder. Better known for 'Our Town'
Lew Wallace. Agee did 'A Death in the Family'
Edgar Rice Burroughs. Allen did 'Anthony Adverse'
| This book's presence is unique in this quiz because its development was not arrested by the author's death, but by the author's arrest. While working on the manuscript for "Netochka Nezvanova," the author was sent to a Siberian labor camp. The book was published in partial form and never revisited by the author. Who wrote this psychological but relatively simple tale? | Unfinished Works by Great Authors
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Fyodor Dostoevsky. "Netochka Nezvanova" was intended to be Dostoevsky's first full-length novel but was tragically cut short when the author was sent to a labor camp for involvement in a radical political group. Dostoevsky's time in labor camps inspired such classic works as "Memoirs from the House of the Dead."
| This author's final novel, "Arctic Summer," was left unfinished when the author passed away after suffering a number of strokes. The book was published a decade after the author's passing. Who wrote this slender volume? | Unfinished Works by Great Authors
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E.M. Forster. "Arctic Summer" is one of the few works by E.M. Forster that hasn't been adapted for film. Movies made from Forster books include "A Passage to India," "Howard's End," "Where Angels Fear to Tread," and "A Room with a View."
| "Under the Jaguar Sun" was intended to contain five stories - one for each sense. Unfortunately, the author passed away after only completing three of the five tales. This slender volume is still a testament to the author's vibrant imagination. Who wrote it? | Unfinished Works by Great Authors
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Italo Calvino. The tales for the senses of taste, hearing, and smell make up the book's 96 pages. The reader is left to ponder how Calvino would have handled the missing two senses, sight and touch. The world was robbed of an incredibly creative writer when Calvino passed away in 1985 of a brain hemorrhage.
| This author left an unfinished manuscript called "Emma" when she died in pregnancy. The potential novel was later completed by another author and republished as "Emma Brown" in 2004. Who wrote the original 19th-century fragment about Victorian England? | Unfinished Works by Great Authors
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Charlotte Bronte. Charlotte Bronte's original 20-page manuscript inspired Clare Boylan to expand what some critics believe could have been Bronte's masterpiece into a respectable Victorian mystery.
| The potential novel "Sanditon" was abandoned due to illness but is not only available in its fragmentary form, but also in an edition completed by a writer known simply as "Another Lady." Who wrote this book that deals with a number of topics including hypochondria? | Unfinished Works by Great Authors
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Jane Austen. Austen died in 1817 of Addison's Disease, leaving "Sanditon" incomplete. Although not among Austen's most beloved works, "Sanditon" is relished by many readers for its biting satire aimed at 19th-century pomp.
| The messy state of his final novel, "El zorro de arriba y el zorro de abajo" ("The Fox From Up Above and the Fox From Down Below"), reflects the author's declining belief in his own ability to write - a likely factor in his decision to commit suicide. Regardless of his own doubt, this author is a treasured figure in Latin American fiction; who is it? | Unfinished Works by Great Authors
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Jose Maria Arguedas. Arguedas's suicide in 1969 ended a career that garnered much critical praise. However, considering favorable comparisons made to the works of Mario Vargas Llosa and Gabriel Garcia Marquez, he has earned a relatively small audience outside of Latin American culture.
| The "Christian Science Monitor" reported, "if it could have been completed, "The Buccaneers" would doubtless stand among the richest and most sophisticated" of the author's novels. What New Englander wrote this intricate work? | Unfinished Works by Great Authors
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Edith Wharton. The manuscript for "The Buccaneers" was completed by Marion Mainwaring and published in 1993, 56 years after Wharton's death.
| Because of the author's tendency to get sidetracked on other works, "The Garden of Eden" was never completed over a fifteen year period and was published 25 years after the writer's death. Who wrote it? | Unfinished Works by Great Authors
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Ernest Hemingway. After Hemingway's suicide, the manuscript was revised and heavily edited for publication. Among Hemingway's other posthumously published works, "Islands in the Stream" also received extensive editing before being published nearly a decade after the author's death.
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