A Will to Write Trivia Quiz

Answer: William Blake

William Blake was the English poet, painter and engraver who is considered to be one of the leading figures of the Romantic Age. Born in London on 28 November 1757, he lived, apart from one short hiatus, his whole life in the city and was profoundly affected by the changes and poverty that he saw daily. A talented painter who parents could not afford private art tuition, he was instead apprenticed to an engraver. In 1789, he produced a self-illustrated book, "The Songs of Innocence".

Five years later, he added a new collection of poems to the original set and published the combined "Songs of Innocence and Experience" in 1794. This book was originally an illuminated book with the paintings, engraving and hand colouring done by Blake himself. This combined book contains one of Blake's most recognized poems, "The Tyger", which is a "Song of Experience". Blake hoped that his works would open the minds of men and help bring about a change in social order. He died in London on 12 August 1827. It was only after his death that the importance of his works gained recognition and acclaim.

Answer: William Wordsworth

No quiz about writers named William would be complete without including the man who gave us the image of "a crowd. A host, of golden daffodils... fluttering and dancing in the breeze". The 1804 poem that contains this image is "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud" by the Romantic poet, William Worsdworth. His 1798 collaboration with his friend and fellow poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, entitled "Lyrical Ballads", is widely considered to be one of the forces launching Romanticism in England. All but four of the poems in this volume were written by Wordsworth; it also contains Coleridge's well-known "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner".

William Worsdworth was born on 07 April 1770 in Cockmouth in the English Lake District. His love of nature came from a childhood spent roaming the beautiful area of his birth. Although he attended Cambridge University, he did not thrive in the academic environment. After a stay in France was cut short by the French Revolution, he spent time in London before moving to Alfoxden House, near Bristol, in 1797. It was here where he met and forged his friendship with Coleridge. In 1813 he moved to Rydal Mount, near Ambleside, where he spent the remainder of his life until his death on 23 April 1850.

Answer: William Carlos Williams

William Carlos Williams was one of the leading lights in the American Imagist Movement which encouraged clear, concise and direct language. His aim was to develop a truly American style of verse that depicted everyday situations of ordinary people. In "The Red Wheelbarrow", probably one of his best known poems, he achieved that beautifully, using just sixteen words and four short verses to invoke an image of and suggest much about a commonplace implement. The poem was first published in Williams' 1923 anthology "Spring and All" where it was given the distinctly prosaic title of "XXII".

William Carlos Williams was born in Rutherford, New Jersey on 17 September 1883 and could be considered somewhat of a polymath. He was a qualified medical doctor and pediatrician and well as a poet, playwright and novelist. While attending the University of Pennsylvania studying for his medical degree, he met and became friends with Ezra Pound who heavily influenced his writing in the early days. Williams suffered from poor health in his later life and his final book "Pictures from Breughel and Other Poems" was published in 1962 shortly before his death on 04 March 1963. This book earned him a posthumous Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.

Answer: William Butler Yeats

William Butler Yeats was the Irish dramatist and poet who is widely considered to be one of the greatest writers of the 20th century. His work and beliefs were tied strongly to his desire to see a revival in Irish culture and the growing push for Ireland to attain independence from Britain. William Butler Yeats was born in Dublin, Ireland on 13 June 1865 and was educated both in Ireland and London. His early works were mostly dramatic and, after co-founding the Irish Literary Theatre with Lady Gregory, he took on the role of chief playwright for the theatre. Yeats' work was also heavily influenced by his passionate relationship with the committed Irish nationalist, Maud Gonne, and the desire for a free Irish State.

Poetry featured more and more in his later writings and two of his best known works are poems. "Easter 1916" was written in reaction to the unsuccessful Easter Rising in April 1916 which culminated in the execution of Irish national leaders. His 1919 poem "The Second Coming" describes his feelings to the situation in Europe post World War One. Both these poems were published in his 1921 collection "Michael Robartes and the Dancer". In 1923, Yeats became the first Irishman to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. He died in France on 28 January 1939.

Answer: William Shakespeare

The Bard of Avon... probably not only the most famous writer named William, but arguably the most famous dramatist the world has seen. William Shakespeare was born in Stratford-upon-Avon on April 1564 with the 23rd given as the most widely accepted date. He is presumed to have lived with his family until he was eighteen when he married Anne Hathaway, a women eight years older than him. The couple had three children together, but little is known of Shakespeare's life between 1585 and 1592, a period which has been called "The Lost Years" by scholars. It is known that his first published works were two poems, "Venus and Adonis" in 1593 and "The Rape of Lucrece" in 1594. It was at this time that Shakespeare became a founding member of the acting troupe, The Chamberlain's Men, where he was the resident playwright, producing plays for the company for nearly twenty years.

The Chamberlain's Men became The King's Men upon the ascension to the English throne of James I, who became their patron. It was in this period that Shakespeare wrote some of his best-known works including "Macbeth" and "The Tempest". No original manuscripts of Shakespeare's works survive, but it is accepted that he wrote 37 plays, 154 sonnets (a form of poetry he made his own), 2 narrative poems and various assorted poems. It was only after his death on 23 April 1616, that members of his company gathered together 36 of his plays and, in 1623, issued them in a collection called "First Folio". We can also thank Shakespeare for the multitude of new words he introduced to the English language such as birthplace, leapfrog and, believe it or not, zany. He truly was one of a kind.

Answer: William Faulkner

William Faulkner was awarded the 1950 Nobel Prize for Literature in recognition of his "powerful and artistically unique contribution to the American novel". He is widely regarded as one of the greatest writers in American literature, especially of Southern literature. William Faulkner was Southern born and bred, and the history and culture of the American South were a deep influence on him. He was born in New Albany, Mississippi on 25 September 1897 and lived for most of his life in Oxford in the same state. From its first appearance in the 1927 novel, "Satoris", the fictional Yoknapatawpha County and its inhabitants featured in many of his works. In 1929 he produced one of his best-known works, "The Sound and the Fury", which tells the story of the decline of an old Southern family, the Compsons. This was followed in 1930 by "As I lay Dying" which details the death of Addie Bundren and her family's journey to bury her.

Faulkner would write thirteen novels in all as well as numerous short stories and essays. He even worked in Hollywood for a short period writing screenplays to help pay the bills. He twice won the Pulitzer Prize, first in 1954 for "A Fable" and then, posthumously, in 1962 for "The Reivers", his final work. William Faulkner died from a heart attack in Byhalia, Mississippi on 06 July 1962.

Answer: William S. Burroughs

Along with his friends Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac, William Seward Burroughs was one of the founders and leading lights of the Beat Generation, a literary movement that sprang up in the United States in the 1950s which advocated free thinking and free speech outside of conventional norms. Burroughs' most well known work, "Naked Lunch", which was first published in Paris in 1959, is considered to be one of the best examples of Beat Generation literature. The book follows William Lee, a junkie who assumes different identities on his travels in the United States, Mexico and eventually Tangiers. It is based on Burroughs' own experiences as a heroin addict when he ended up spending four years in Tangiers. The book originally fell foul of the censors in the United States and would not be published there until 1962. It was the subject of one of the last trials for a literary work when the Commonwealth of Massachusetts prosecuted it as obscene.

William S Burroughs was born into a well-to-do family in St Louis, Missouri on 05 February 1919. He attended Harvard from where he graduated in 1936. From there he drifted until in 1943 he met Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac in New York and the three became friends which was the start of the Beat Movement. Burroughs would write some 18 novels as well as numerous short stories and essays. In 1983 he was elected to the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. He died in Lawrence, Kansas on 02 August 1997.

Answer: William Golding

William Golding is the British novelist, poet and playwright who is probably best known for his debut novel "Lord of the Flies". The novel, which involves a group of schoolboys who survive a plane crash and are left stranded on a desert island, follows the behaviour of the boys as they try to ensure their survival. The novel is now such an integral part of many an English literature curriculum that it is hard to believe that it was rejected 21 times before being accepted for publication in 1954. Golding stated that the inspiration for the novel came from his experiences as a teacher at the Bishop Wordsworth's School in Salisbury where he dealt daily with unruly boys.

William Golding was born in Newquay, Cornwall on 19 September 1911 and studied at Oxford University before decided to follow his father into the teaching profession. Cue the position which gave him the inspiration for his best known work. He left teaching to join the Royal Navy in 1940 and saw active combat during World War II. The experiences he faced during this time heavily influenced his writing and outlook on life. He once stated that ''I began to see what people were capable of doing. Anyone who moved through those years without understanding that man produces evil as a bee produces honey, must have been blind or wrong in the head.'' Although the body of his work takes the form of novels, he was also a playwright and poet. In fact, his first published work in 1934 was a collection of poems simply entitled "Poems". He was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 1988 for his services to literature and died in Perranarworthal in Cornwall on 19 June 1993.

Answer: William Goldman

"Inconceivable!" William Goldman once borrowed a line from his own work to describe how he felt about his career as a novelist, playwright. essayist and Academy Award winning screenwriter. The line appears in what is probably his best known work, "The Princess Bride", the 1973 fantasy romance novel that Goldman maintained brought him more response from people than all his other work put together. William Goldman was born in Highlands Park, Illinois on 12 August 1931. He graduated from Columbia University with a Master's degree in English in 1956 and the following year, his first novel, "The Temple of Gold", was published.

In 1965 he turned his hand to screenwriting and in 1969, his original screenplay for "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" earned him his first Academy Award. In the early 1970s he returned to fiction writing producing "The Princess Bride" in 1973 and a conspiracy thriller, "Marathon Man", in 1974. Both of these novels were made into movies with Goldman doing the adaptations. Goldman continued producing novels, plays and screenplays, winning a second Academy Award for his 1976 adaptation of "All The President's Men". He died in Manhattan on 16 November 2018.

Answer: William "Bill" Bryson

If you have ever read any of the books written by William "Bill" Bryson, you will have encountered his gentle, humorous, yet insightful way of writing that has made him a bestselling non-fiction author. Covering topics from the English language, through travel and matters scientific, he has a knack of turning dry facts into a rattling good read. When his 2003 book "A Short History of Everything" was published, one reviewer commented that Bryson was the science teacher most of us wish we'd had, so accessible did he make scientific matters to the non-expert. It was his 1995 book "Notes from a Small Island", about his experiences as an American exploring Britain, that first brought him acclaim.

Bill Bryson was born William McGuire Bryson is Des Moines, Iowa on 08 December 1951. His 2006 book "The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid" describes his life growing up in Des Moines. In 1977, following his marriage to an English nurse called Cynthia Biller, the couple moved permanently to Britain. He took out British citizenship in 2014 and holds dual citizenship. He was awarded an OBE (Order of the British Empire) in December 2006 for his contribution to literature.