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Quiz about London In Literature
Quiz about London In Literature

London In Literature Trivia Quiz


Naturally enough, a lot of English literature is concerned with the capital, and many authors are intimately associated with the city. Here is a quiz on London in literature from the fourteenth to the twentieth centuries.

A multiple-choice quiz by TabbyTom. Estimated time: 6 mins.
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Author
TabbyTom
Time
6 mins
Type
Multiple Choice
Quiz #
103,370
Updated
Feb 22 23
# Qns
15
Difficulty
Tough
Avg Score
8 / 15
Plays
2632
Awards
Top 5% quiz!
Last 3 plays: mulligas (8/15), Guest 2 (14/15), Guest 199 (8/15).
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Question 1 of 15
1. Chaucer's Canterbury pilgrims set out from the Tabard. Where is this inn situated? Hint


Question 2 of 15
2. One of the most enthusiastic poems in praise of London was the work of a Scotsman, and was written about 1501. Its refrain, in modernized spelling, is "London, thou art the flower of cities all". Who wrote it? Hint


Question 3 of 15
3. A comedy by Ben Jonson deals with the adventures and misadventures of visitors to a famous old London fair. The characters include Overdo (a magistrate in disguise who gets put in the stocks) and a ranting Puritan zealot called Zeal-of-the-Land Busy. What is the name of the play? Hint


Question 4 of 15
4. Who wrote "A Journal of the Plague Year 1665"? Hint


Question 5 of 15
5. Which eighteenth-century writer declared that "When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life, for there is in London all that life can afford"? Hint


Question 6 of 15
6. "Earth has not anything to show more fair" is the first line of a sonnet inspired by the view of the sunrise over London from Westminster Bridge. Who wrote it? Hint


Question 7 of 15
7. "Hell is a city much like London" is a line from a work by which early nineteenth-century poet? Hint


Question 8 of 15
8. "London. Michaelmas Term lately over ... Fog everywhere. Fog up the river ... fog down the river, where it rolls defiled among the tiers of shipping and the waterside pollutions of a great (and dirty) city. Fog on the Essex marshes, fog on the Kentish heights. Fog creeping into the cabooses ... fog lying out on the yards ... fog drooping on the gunwales ... Fog in the eyes and throats of ancient Greenwich pensioners, ...; fog in the stem and bowl of the afternoon pipe of the wrathful skipper ... fog cruelly pinching the toes and fingers of his shivering little prentice boy on deck. Chance people on the bridges peeping over the parapets into a nether sky of fog, with fog all round them." This is the slightly abbreviated opening of which Dickens novel? Hint


Question 9 of 15
9. Which of Dickens's novels gives a vivid picture of the Gordon Riots of 1780? Hint


Question 10 of 15
10. One of the most notable figures in the "penny dreadful" literature of Victorian England was Sweeney Todd of Fleet Street, who killed his customers and sold their corpses to a neighbouring pie-maker. What was Todd's trade? Hint


Question 11 of 15
11. Elizabeth Barrett eloped with Robert Browning from her family's house in which Marylebone street? Hint


Question 12 of 15
12. After George Orwell left the Burma police force, he spent a couple of years in poverty in and out of Britain, doing menial work and even living the life of a tramp for a time. His experiences are recalled in "Down and Out In ___________ and London". Which city's name is missing from the title? Hint


Question 13 of 15
13. More than twenty years before Orwell, an American author spent several weeks in the slums of East London and described them in "The People of the Abyss". Who was he? Hint


Question 14 of 15
14. The suburbs which grew up along the north-western end of the Metropolitan Line between the world wars became known as Metroland. Which poet celebrated Metroland in a 1970s television documentary? Hint


Question 15 of 15
15. Which modern author has written a number of novels set in London, including "Hawksmoor", "Chatterton", "The House of Doctor Dee" and "Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem"? Hint



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Most Recent Scores
Mar 27 2024 : mulligas: 8/15
Mar 11 2024 : Guest 2: 14/15
Feb 12 2024 : Guest 199: 8/15
Feb 12 2024 : Guest 82: 12/15
Feb 11 2024 : ziggythepooh: 10/15
Feb 11 2024 : Guest 172: 4/15
Feb 04 2024 : Guest 31: 13/15

Score Distribution

quiz
Quiz Answer Key and Fun Facts
1. Chaucer's Canterbury pilgrims set out from the Tabard. Where is this inn situated?

Answer: Southwark

The Tabard (renamed The Talbot in 1678) stood in what is now Talbot Yard, off Borough High Street. It thrived for centuries, but went into a decline when stagecoaches gave way to railways. The building (no longer a tavern) was demolished in the 1870s.
2. One of the most enthusiastic poems in praise of London was the work of a Scotsman, and was written about 1501. Its refrain, in modernized spelling, is "London, thou art the flower of cities all". Who wrote it?

Answer: William Dunbar

In this florid Latinate work London is described as "sovereign of cities ... gem of all joy, jasper of jocundity, most mighty carbuncle of virtue and valour .. of royal cities rose ... empress of towns", and so on. It is attributed to Dunbar by most authorities, including the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, but some critics dispute the attribution.
3. A comedy by Ben Jonson deals with the adventures and misadventures of visitors to a famous old London fair. The characters include Overdo (a magistrate in disguise who gets put in the stocks) and a ranting Puritan zealot called Zeal-of-the-Land Busy. What is the name of the play?

Answer: Bartholomew Fair

Bartholomew Fair, which opened each year on St Bartholomew's Day (August 24th), dated back to the twelfth century. It was held at Smithfield. Originally a cloth market, it gradually became a centre of entertainment, with tightrope walkers, fire-eaters, sideshows of all kinds and theatrical performances of a famously high quality. Like other fairs, it was often violent and disorderly; and although it outlived most of the other ancient fairs, it was finally suppressed in 1855. Jonson's play gives a good idea of the fair as it was in his day.
4. Who wrote "A Journal of the Plague Year 1665"?

Answer: Daniel Defoe

Although the book is written in the style of an eye-witness account by "H. F.", the work is essentially a historical novel. The information about the plague has been gathered from various sources and is presented in a very vivid style.
5. Which eighteenth-century writer declared that "When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life, for there is in London all that life can afford"?

Answer: Samuel Johnson

In my opinion, one of the clearest examples of Johnson's unfailing good sense!
6. "Earth has not anything to show more fair" is the first line of a sonnet inspired by the view of the sunrise over London from Westminster Bridge. Who wrote it?

Answer: William Wordsworth

Written in 1802.
7. "Hell is a city much like London" is a line from a work by which early nineteenth-century poet?

Answer: Percy Bysshe Shelley

"Hell is a city much like London, a populous and a smoky city. There are all sorts of people undone, and there is little or no fun done; small justice shown, and still less pity." The lines are from "Peter Bell the Third". Many people today seem to think of Shelley as just the celebrator of the skylark and the west wind; his satirical work and radical political views are largely forgotten.
8. "London. Michaelmas Term lately over ... Fog everywhere. Fog up the river ... fog down the river, where it rolls defiled among the tiers of shipping and the waterside pollutions of a great (and dirty) city. Fog on the Essex marshes, fog on the Kentish heights. Fog creeping into the cabooses ... fog lying out on the yards ... fog drooping on the gunwales ... Fog in the eyes and throats of ancient Greenwich pensioners, ...; fog in the stem and bowl of the afternoon pipe of the wrathful skipper ... fog cruelly pinching the toes and fingers of his shivering little prentice boy on deck. Chance people on the bridges peeping over the parapets into a nether sky of fog, with fog all round them." This is the slightly abbreviated opening of which Dickens novel?

Answer: Bleak House

The book contains a vigorous satire on the abuses of the Chancery Court, and the fog comes to symbolize the confusion and corruption of the law. "Never can there come fog too thick, never can there come mud and mire too deep, to assort with the groping and floundering condition which this High Court of Chancery, most pestilent of hoary sinners, holds this day in the sight of heaven and earth."
9. Which of Dickens's novels gives a vivid picture of the Gordon Riots of 1780?

Answer: Barnaby Rudge

These riots against the Catholic Relief Act of 1778 were the last major outbreak of anti-Catholic violence. A protest march to Parliament, led by Lord George Gordon, got out of control, and the subsequent riots lasted a week. Catholic chapels on the fringe of the City were set on fire. Prisoners were released and five prisons, including Newgate, were burned down. Downing Street and the Bank of England were attacked.

It is estimated that about 850 people were killed. After order was restored, twenty-one of the leading rioters were hanged, although Gordon (accused of high treason) was acquitted.
10. One of the most notable figures in the "penny dreadful" literature of Victorian England was Sweeney Todd of Fleet Street, who killed his customers and sold their corpses to a neighbouring pie-maker. What was Todd's trade?

Answer: Barber

E. S. Turner, in "Boys Will Be Boys", a study of kids' reading matter, devotes a whole chapter to the Sweeney Todd legend. It may have its origins in reports of an alleged case in Paris in 1800 (see
http://www.pbs.org/kqed/demonbarber/penny/truecriminals.html), which was reported in England but forgotten with the passage of time. Sweeney Todd first appears in "The String of Pearls" by T. P. Prest (1840), and the story has been told and retold countless times since then. The most recent notable version is probably Stephen Sondheim's musical, first produced in 1979.
11. Elizabeth Barrett eloped with Robert Browning from her family's house in which Marylebone street?

Answer: Wimpole Street

The romance is well known even to the non-literary, thanks to the 1934 film with Fredric March and Norma Shearer.
12. After George Orwell left the Burma police force, he spent a couple of years in poverty in and out of Britain, doing menial work and even living the life of a tramp for a time. His experiences are recalled in "Down and Out In ___________ and London". Which city's name is missing from the title?

Answer: Paris

Published in 1933, it was Orwell's first book.
13. More than twenty years before Orwell, an American author spent several weeks in the slums of East London and described them in "The People of the Abyss". Who was he?

Answer: Jack London

London posed as a stranded American sailor and stayed in doss-houses in the East End.
14. The suburbs which grew up along the north-western end of the Metropolitan Line between the world wars became known as Metroland. Which poet celebrated Metroland in a 1970s television documentary?

Answer: John Betjeman

Betjeman knew the area well, and much of his verse celebrates the kind of life that was lived there.
15. Which modern author has written a number of novels set in London, including "Hawksmoor", "Chatterton", "The House of Doctor Dee" and "Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem"?

Answer: Peter Ackroyd

Ackroyd's London is one in which the past always permeates the present, often in a sinister way. His history of the city ("London: A Biography") is written in a similar vein.
Source: Author TabbyTom

This quiz was reviewed by FunTrivia editor Bruyere before going online.
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