160 Fun Facts About Literature

Which novel begins with the line "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times"?

Charles Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities (1859) opens with one of the most famous first lines in English literature, contrasting the era of the French Revolution.

In One Hundred Years of Solitude, what is the name of the fictional town founded by the Buendía family?

Macondo, founded by patriarch José Arcadio Buendía, is modelled on Aracataca, the Colombian town where the author was born. Comala is Juan Rulfo's ghost town in Pedro Páramo.

In Homer's Odyssey, how many years does Odysseus spend trying to get home to Ithaca after the Trojan War?

10 years, on top of the 10-year war, so he has been gone 20 years when he finally lands; not one of his crew survives the trip.

What pen name did Mary Ann Evans use to publish her novels?

Mary Ann Evans adopted the male pen name George Eliot to ensure her works were taken seriously. She wrote Middlemarch, Silas Marner, and The Mill on the Floss.

Which Shakespeare play features the characters Prospero and Ariel?

The Tempest gave us 'brave new world' and Caliban; it is set on an island where Prospero has lived in exile for twelve years.

What is the name of the fictional country in George Orwell's 1984?

Oceania is perpetually at war with either Eurasia or Eastasia; Britain itself has been renamed Airstrip One.

Who wrote One Hundred Years of Solitude?

Gabriel Garcia Marquez published One Hundred Years of Solitude in 1967. The novel follows the Buendia family and is a landmark of magical realism and Latin American literature.

In which novel does the character Atticus Finch defend a man accused of a crime he did not commit?

Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird (1960) features lawyer Atticus Finch defending Tom Robinson, a Black man falsely accused of assaulting a white woman in 1930s Alabama.

What literary device describes giving human qualities to non-human things?

Personification is the attribution of human characteristics to animals, inanimate objects, or abstract concepts, such as saying the wind whispered through the trees.

Which Russian author wrote Crime and Punishment?

Fyodor Dostoevsky published Crime and Punishment in 1866. The novel follows Raskolnikov, a destitute student who commits murder and grapples with guilt and moral redemption.

Which 14-line poetic form, usually in iambic pentameter, did Shakespeare write 154 of?

A sonnet in Shakespeare's form ends with a rhyming couplet; the Petrarchan version splits into an octave and a sestet.

Which author created the character of Sherlock Holmes?

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle introduced Sherlock Holmes in A Study in Scarlet (1887). Holmes appeared in four novels and 56 short stories.

Don Quixote, often called the first modern novel, was published in two parts in which century?

17th century, in 1605 and 1615; Cervantes died in April 1616, the same month as Shakespeare.

What is the name of the whale in Herman Melville's famous novel?

Moby Dick (or the White Whale) is the great sperm whale Captain Ahab obsessively pursues in Melville's 1851 novel of the same name.

Which Nobel Prize-winning author wrote The Old Man and the Sea?

Ernest Hemingway won the Pulitzer for it in 1953 and the Nobel in 1954; it was the last major work published in his lifetime.

Which mythological figure is the subject of Milton's narrative poem about the fall from Heaven?

Milton's Paradise Lost (1667) opens in medias res with Satan and his fallen angels already cast into Hell. Beelzebub is his second-in-command in the poem.

Which Bronte sister published Jane Eyre as 'Currer Bell'?

Published 19 October 1847 as 'Jane Eyre: An Autobiography'; the first American edition followed in January 1848.

In Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis, what does Gregor Samsa wake up transformed into?

Gregor Samsa awakes to find himself transformed into a monstrous insect (ungeheures Ungeziefer in German). Kafka deliberately left the exact species ambiguous.

Which ancient Greek playwright is called the father of tragedy, and wrote the Oresteia trilogy?

Aeschylus reportedly died when an eagle dropped a tortoise on his bald head; he added a second actor, turning recitation into drama.

What is the term for a long narrative poem that tells the story of a hero's adventures?

An epic is a lengthy narrative poem centered on a heroic figure whose actions affect the fate of nations. Famous examples include The Iliad, The Odyssey, and Beowulf.

Who is the author of the Harry Potter series?

J.K. Rowling wrote the seven Harry Potter novels (1997-2007), which have sold over 500 million copies worldwide and become one of the best-selling book series in history.

Which novel by Toni Morrison follows a formerly enslaved woman haunted by the ghost of her dead daughter?

Beloved (1987) is based on the true story of Margaret Garner. The novel won the Pulitzer Prize in 1988 and is considered Morrison's masterpiece.

What Japanese form of poetry traditionally consists of 17 syllables in a 5-7-5 pattern?

Haiku is a Japanese poetic form of three lines with 5, 7, and 5 syllables. It traditionally contains a seasonal reference (kigo) and a cutting word (kireji).

Which Victorian novel features the character Ebenezer Scrooge?

Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol (1843) tells the story of the miserly Ebenezer Scrooge, who is visited by three spirits on Christmas Eve and transformed by the experience.

Which prophet's book closes the Old Testament in Protestant Bibles, the last word before the New Testament?

Malachi dates from around 420 BC; Protestant Bibles end the Old Testament with the prophets, so it sits immediately before Matthew.

Which author wrote The Great Gatsby, a novel set during the Jazz Age?

F. Scott Fitzgerald published The Great Gatsby in 1925. The novel explores themes of wealth, class, and the American Dream through the mysterious Jay Gatsby.

Which 1950s literary movement produced Jack Kerouac's On the Road and Allen Ginsberg's Howl?

The Beat Generation also gave us William S. Burroughs' Naked Lunch; the word 'beatnik' was coined in 1958 by a San Francisco columnist.

In whose play does a salesman named Willy Loman struggle with the failure of his American Dream?

Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman (1949) follows Willy Loman's mental deterioration as he confronts the gap between his dreams and reality. It won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

Which Italian poet tours Hell, Purgatory and Paradise in The Divine Comedy?

He wrote it between 1308 and 1321, and it is still ranked among the greatest works in any language.

What term describes a story within a story, such as the structure used in Conrad's Heart of Darkness?

A frame narrative (or frame story) embeds one or more tales inside a main story. In Heart of Darkness, an unnamed narrator aboard a Thames yawl relays Marlow's account of the Congo.

Which African novelist won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1986, the first African to do so?

Nigerian playwright and poet Wole Soyinka became the first African Nobel laureate in Literature in 1986, recognized for his wide cultural perspective and poetic overtones.

What is the term for a novel following a main character's growth from youth to adulthood?

Bildungsroman (German for formation novel) is a literary genre focusing on a protagonist's psychological and moral growth. Famous examples include Jane Eyre and Great Expectations.

Which author wrote the Narnia series, beginning with The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe?

C.S. Lewis published The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe in 1950. The Chronicles of Narnia series consists of seven fantasy novels with Christian allegorical themes.

Which ancient Indian epic tells the story of Prince Rama's quest to rescue his wife Sita?

The Ramayana, attributed to the sage Valmiki, is one of the two major Sanskrit epics of ancient India. It consists of about 24,000 verses in seven books.

What narrative technique presents a character's thoughts as a continuous, unstructured flow?

Stream of consciousness was borrowed from psychology: William James coined the phrase in 1890, before any novelist used it.

Who wrote the gothic novel Frankenstein, first published anonymously in 1818?

Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein at age 18, inspired by a ghost story competition. The novel is considered both a pioneering work of science fiction and a cornerstone of gothic literature.

Which American poet wrote "Because I could not stop for Death" and lived most of her life in seclusion?

Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) wrote nearly 1,800 poems, most published posthumously. She lived a largely reclusive life in Amherst, Massachusetts.

Which seven-volume French novel, over 1.2 million words, holds the record as the longest ever published?

In Search of Lost Time begins with a madeleine dipped in tea; Proust died before the last volumes were published.

Which Aldous Huxley novel takes its title from a line spoken by Miranda in a Shakespeare play?

The phrase comes from Miranda's speech in The Tempest: 'O brave new world, That has such people in't!' Shakespeare already meant it ironically, and Huxley sharpened the irony for his dystopia.

Which playwright wrote A Streetcar Named Desire and The Glass Menagerie?

Tennessee Williams wrote A Streetcar Named Desire (1947) and The Glass Menagerie (1944). Both plays are considered masterpieces of American drama and explore themes of memory and desire.

What is the name of the land where hobbits live in J.R.R. Tolkien's novels?

The Shire is the peaceful homeland of the hobbits in Middle-earth. Tolkien based it partly on the rural English countryside of his youth in Warwickshire and Worcestershire.

Which 20th-century author wrote the absurdist play Waiting for Godot?

Samuel Beckett wrote Waiting for Godot, first performed in French in 1953. The play, in which two characters wait endlessly for someone who never arrives, is a cornerstone of Theatre of the Absurd.

Which Chilean poet-diplomat took the 1971 Nobel Prize in Literature?

His Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair (1924) became one of the best-selling poetry books in Spanish, and the 1971 Nobel crowned a career also spent in politics and diplomacy.

What fictional detective was created by Agatha Christie and is known for his "little grey cells"?

Hercule Poirot is a Belgian detective who appeared in 33 of Christie's novels. His catchphrase about using his "little grey cells" refers to his deductive reasoning ability.

Which 1847 novel tells of the destructive love between Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff?

Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights was her only novel. Set on the Yorkshire moors, it is known for its complex narrative structure and dark exploration of obsessive love.

Which Mark Twain book was the first submitted to a publisher as a typewritten manuscript, in 1883?

Twain did not do the typing himself; a secretary typed it up from his handwritten manuscript. Twain later misremembered and claimed the honour for Tom Sawyer.

Which Nigerian author wrote Things Fall Apart?

Chinua Achebe took the title from Yeats's poem 'The Second Coming'; the novel follows Okonkwo as colonial rule arrives.

What do critics call a metaphor sustained across an entire poem or work?

John Donne and the metaphysical poets were known for them, yoking two unlike things together and sustaining the comparison through a whole work.

Which author's unfinished novel The Castle features a protagonist known only as K.?

Franz Kafka's The Castle (Das Schloss), published posthumously in 1926, follows a land surveyor called K. who struggles to gain access to a mysterious castle and its governing authorities.

Which American novelist wrote Invisible Man, a landmark of African American literature published in 1952?

Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man won the National Book Award in 1953. The novel addresses the social and intellectual issues facing African Americans in the early 20th century through its unnamed narrator.

How old was Jane Austen when she wrote Pride and Prejudice?

It was her third novel written but only the second to reach print, in 1813.

Which whaling ship does Captain Ahab command in Moby-Dick?

The Pequod is named for a Native American tribe; the novel flopped and was out of print when Melville died in 1891.

Who published the complete Ulysses in Paris on 2 February 1922?

Joyce insisted the book appear on his 40th birthday; the first three copies arrived that morning.

On what date is Ulysses set, now celebrated as Bloomsday?

The novel follows three Dubliners across that single day.

In what year was the rewritten War and Peace published in full?

An early version had appeared serially from 1865 before Tolstoy rewrote the whole thing.

Which of his works did Tolstoy call his 'first true novel'?

By the final installments he had come to hate it and finished it unwillingly.

Which novel was prosecuted for obscenity after its 1856 serialisation in the Revue de Paris?

The January 1857 trial made Flaubert's debut notorious, and he was acquitted.

Which ghostwriter supplied plot outlines for The Count of Monte Cristo?

Maquet collaborated with Dumas on many novels, including The Three Musketeers.

Into how many books are both the Iliad and the Odyssey divided?

The Iliad runs to 15,693 lines of dactylic hexameter in its standard edition.

How many alliterative lines does Beowulf contain?

The only firm date is the manuscript itself, produced between AD 975 and 1025.

How many tales make up Chaucer's Canterbury Tales?

The pilgrims are travelling to the shrine of Thomas Becket at Canterbury Cathedral.

Into how many books was the 1674 second edition of Milton's great epic arranged?

The 1667 first version had ten books; the reshuffle followed the model of Virgil's Aeneid.

Which is Shakespeare's longest play?

It was written sometime between 1599 and 1601 and set in Denmark.

Which Shakespeare tragedy is his shortest?

It also contains the most allusions to King James I, patron of Shakespeare's company.

Which Italian writer's tale is the source of Romeo and Juliet's plot?

Arthur Brooke's 1562 verse translation carried it into English before Shakespeare.

Which fictional island did Gulliver's Travels popularise?

John Gay said the 1726 satire was 'universally read, from the cabinet council to the nursery'.

How many years does Robinson Crusoe spend on his island?

Defoe's 1719 book is often credited with beginning realistic fiction as a genre.

Which English seaside town does Dracula plague after arriving from Transylvania?

The 1897 novel is told entirely through letters, diaries and newspaper clippings.

Where did a shorter version of The Picture of Dorian Gray first appear in July 1890?

It was the only novel Oscar Wilde ever wrote.

In which country was Adventures of Huckleberry Finn published first, in December 1884?

The American edition followed in February 1885.

Which pseudonym does the narrator of Lolita write under?

He is a French literature professor who becomes stepfather to twelve-year-old Dolores Haze.

In what year did Joseph Heller begin writing Catch-22, published in 1961?

It was his debut novel and is set in World War II from 1942 to 1944.

Who is the time-hopping protagonist of Slaughterhouse-Five?

Billy Pilgrim's Dresden experience was Vonnegut's own; the 1969 novel's subtitle is The Children's Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death.

From which state are the Joads driven in The Grapes of Wrath?

The 1939 novel won the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize.

Which poet's work gives Of Mice and Men its title?

The line comes from 'To a Mouse': 'The best laid schemes o' mice an' men / Gang aft agley'.

What was the original name of the farm in Animal Farm?

Orwell's subtitle for the August 1945 book was 'A Fairy Story'.

Which 1954 debut novel strands a group of British schoolboys on an island?

William Golding went on to win the Nobel Prize in 1983.

What is the name of the disillusioned fireman in Fahrenheit 451?

Bradbury wrote it during the McCarthy era, inspired partly by Nazi book burnings.

What is the theocratic state called in The Handmaid's Tale?

Offred narrates from a near-future New England after the US government is overthrown.

Who narrates Midnight's Children?

Rushdie's 1981 second novel is often compared with Günter Grass's The Tin Drum.

In what year was Kafka's The Trial published, after his death?

Josef K. is arrested and prosecuted without ever learning what crime he is accused of.

What is the name of the indifferent narrator of Camus's The Stranger?

He kills an unnamed Arab man on an Algiers beach weeks after his mother's funeral.

In which country was The Little Prince first published, in April 1943?

Saint-Exupéry's works were banned in Vichy France, so it appeared there only after liberation.

Who is Candide's optimistic tutor in Voltaire's 1759 satire?

He drills the young man in Leibnizian optimism before the world takes it apart.

How many wood engravings did John Tenniel supply for the first Alice's Adventures in Wonderland?

The 1865 book is a landmark of the literary nonsense genre.

What was Treasure Island originally titled?

It was serialised in Young Folks under the pseudonym 'Captain George North'.

Great Expectations was which number novel by Charles Dickens?

It ran as a serial in his weekly All the Year Round from December 1860 to August 1861.

Which Dickens novel carries the subtitle 'The Parish Boy's Progress'?

It was his second novel, serialised from 1837 to 1839.

In how many paper-bound instalments did Middlemarch first appear?

They ran from December 1871 to December 1872 alongside a four-volume book edition.

Which scheming heroine drives Thackeray's Vanity Fair?

The serial's subtitle was 'Pen and Pencil Sketches of English Society', and Thackeray drew the pictures himself.

Who tells the story of his voyage upriver in Heart of Darkness?

Conrad never names the river, though the Congo Free State was then Leopold II's private colony.

What was the working title of Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway?

Michael Cunningham later borrowed it for his 1998 novel about Woolf and her readers.

On which Scottish island is To the Lighthouse set?

The Ramsay family visits between 1910 and 1920 in a novel of almost no direct action.

Which family is at the centre of Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury?

It was his second novel set in fictional Yoknapatawpha County.

Which Georgia county, along with Atlanta, is the setting of Gone with the Wind?

The title comes from Ernest Dowson's poem 'Non Sum Qualis eram Bonae Sub Regno Cynarae'.

Which 1982 novel written as letters won the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction?

It sits at number 17 on the ALA's list of most challenged books of 2000-2010.

In which country did Zora Neale Hurston write Their Eyes Were Watching God in seven weeks?

She later said she was 'under internal pressure' and wished she could write it again.

Under what pseudonym was The Bell Jar first published in 1963?

Plath died a month after its UK release; it appeared under her own name only in 1966.

What name does Jack Kerouac give himself as narrator of On the Road?

He typed the draft on a 120-foot scroll of taped-together tracing paper.

How long was the continuous 'scroll' on which Kerouac typed On the Road?

The published book was shorter than the scroll and swapped in pseudonyms for the major characters.

At which San Francisco venue did Ginsberg first perform 'Howl' in October 1955?

Publisher Lawrence Ferlinghetti was later charged with disseminating obscene literature.

How many lines long is T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land?

It first ran in Eliot's own magazine The Criterion in October 1922.

How many poems were in the first 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass?

By Whitman's death in 1892 the collection had grown to more than 400 poems.

On whose bust does the raven perch in Poe's poem?

The narrator mourns his lost Lenore while the bird repeats a single word.

Who was the youngest Nobel literature laureate, aged 41 in 1907?

Kipling remains the only English-language winner to take the prize that young.

Which philosopher declined the 1964 Nobel Prize in Literature?

Boris Pasternak accepted in 1958 and was then forced by Soviet authorities to decline.

Who was the first winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, in 1901?

The French poet had trained as an engineer and wanted to write 'scientific poetry for modern times'.

Who was the first woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, in 1909?

In 1914 she also became the first woman admitted to the Swedish Academy.

Who was the first American to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature, in 1930?

His big novels included Main Street, Babbitt, Arrowsmith and Elmer Gantry.

Which novel made Pearl S. Buck the best-selling US author of 1931 and 1932?

In 1938 she became the first American woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Who in 1913 became the first non-European to win a Nobel Prize in any category?

He also wrote and composed the national anthems of India and Bangladesh.

In which country was Doctor Zhivago first published, in 1957?

Publisher Giangiacomo Feltrinelli had the manuscript smuggled out after Soviet censors refused it.

Which Japanese-born British novelist won the 2017 Nobel Prize in Literature?

The Academy praised novels that 'uncovered the abyss beneath our illusory sense of connection with the world'.

Who won the first Booker Prize in 1969, for Something to Answer For?

The prize now pays £50,000 to the best English-language novel published in the UK or Ireland.

Who was the first American to win the Booker Prize, in 2016?

The prize opened to any English-language novel published in the UK in 2014.

Which South African author was the first to win the Booker Prize twice?

Peter Carey, Hilary Mantel and Margaret Atwood have since matched the feat.

The Pulitzer for fiction was awarded under what heading from 1918 to 1947?

The programme launched in 1917 with seven prizes, four of which were awarded that first year.

Which poet is the only one to have won four Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry?

He became one of America's rare public literary figures, reciting at Kennedy's inauguration.

Which Mesopotamian poem is the world's oldest surviving narrative literature?

It began as five Sumerian poems about the king of Uruk, some possibly from about 2100 BCE.

Which Heian-era lady-in-waiting is credited with The Tale of Genji?

It is called the first novel by a woman to win global recognition.

Under what one-word title did Arthur Waley abridge Journey to the West in 1942?

The 16th-century Ming novel is attributed to Wu Cheng'en.

To whom is the 14th-century Romance of the Three Kingdoms attributed?

It spans from the Yellow Turban Rebellion in AD 184 to reunification under the Western Jin in 280.

Which 18th-century Chinese novel is also known as The Story of the Stone?

Cao Xueqin's book is one of the Four Great Classic Novels of Chinese literature.

Which war of succession is narrated in the Mahabharata?

The cousins on either side are the Kauravas and the Pandavas.

In which city did Ibsen's A Doll's House premiere in December 1879?

It was staged at the Royal Danish Theatre the same month it was published.

In which city was Hedda Gabler first staged in January 1891?

Ibsen attended the Residenztheater premiere but stayed backstage; the reviews were bad.

Who directed the 1904 Moscow Art Theatre premiere of Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard?

Chekhov called his last play a comedy; Stanislavski staged it as a tragedy.

Arthur Miller's The Crucible is an allegory for which political phenomenon?

Miller was himself convicted of contempt of Congress in 1956 for refusing to name names.

In which language was Shaw's Pygmalion first performed on stage, in 1913?

The Vienna Hofburg premiere came six months before the London opening with Mrs Patrick Campbell.

Where in London did The Importance of Being Earnest open on 14 February 1895?

It was the last of Wilde's four drawing-room comedies.

How many detective novels did Agatha Christie write?

Poirot debuted in The Mysterious Affair at Styles in 1920 and Tommy and Tuppence in 1922.

At what age did Charles Dickens leave school to work in a factory?

He was born in Portsmouth in 1812 and is widely called the greatest Victorian novelist.

How many novels did Jane Austen complete?

Her plots often turn on women's dependence on marriage for social and economic security.

Which painter was Virginia Woolf's sister?

Woolf grew up the seventh child in a blended household of eight children in South Kensington.

Which two 1940s collections are Jorge Luis Borges's best-known works?

His stories circle around dreams, labyrinths, mirrors, infinity and invented writers.

By 2025, into roughly how many languages had Haruki Murakami's work been translated?

By 2025 his novels had been translated into roughly 50 languages, making him one of the most widely read living Japanese authors.

How many autobiographies did Maya Angelou publish?

The first, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, covers her childhood.

In which Missouri town was Langston Hughes born?

He became a leader of the Harlem Renaissance and an early innovator of jazz poetry.

Which sequel-turned-epic has sold over 150 million copies since its 1954-55 publication?

Tolkien wrote it in stages between 1937 and 1949 as a follow-up to The Hobbit.

For which children's book award was The Hobbit nominated in 1937?

It also won a New York Herald Tribune prize for best juvenile fiction.

On which birthday does Harry Potter receive his Hogwarts letter?

Philosopher's Stone was J. K. Rowling's debut novel.

With which novel did Dune tie for the 1966 Hugo Award?

Herbert's book also won the very first Nebula Award for Best Novel.

How many districts surround the Capitol in Panem in The Hunger Games?

The Capitol stages the annual games as punishment for a past rebellion.

Which 2000 novel first introduced Dan Brown's symbologist Robert Langdon?

The Da Vinci Code, his second Langdon book, opens with a murder in the Louvre.

According to Guinness World Records, which book is the best-selling of all time?

Guinness puts its sales at an estimated 5 to 7 billion copies.

How many lines does a villanelle have?

Five tercets and a closing quatrain carry two refrains, as in Dylan Thomas's 'Do not go gentle'.

What is the rhyme scheme of a limerick?

The five-line form appeared in England in the early 18th century.

What term describes a novel written as a series of letters?

Modern examples stretch the form to diaries, emails and blog posts.

What Latin phrase describes a story that opens in the middle of the action, as the Iliad and Hamlet do?

In medias res is 'into the middle of things'; its opposite, ab ovo, means starting 'from the egg'.

What is the term for an unlikely event that suddenly resolves an unsolvable plot?

The Latin means 'god from the machine', after the crane that lowered gods onto Greek stages.

Which figure of speech pairs contradictory terms, as in 'bittersweet'?

'Cruel kindness' is another textbook example.

Which everyday words are thought to have begun as onomatopoeia, per Wikipedia?

Their original sound-imitating quality has faded for modern speakers.

Which style presents supernatural events in an otherwise realistic, mundane setting?

It is most often associated with Latin American novelists such as García Márquez.

Victor Hugo finished writing Les Misérables in 1861 while visiting which battlefield?

He devotes 19 chapters of Volume II to an account of and meditation on the battle, a famous digression from the plot.

Between 1961 and 1982, which novel was the most censored book in US high schools and libraries?

A Tulsa teacher was fired in 1960 for assigning it, and an Issaquah school board member later called it part of a 'communist plot'.

Dostoevsky named the hero of The Brothers Karamazov after his son, who died in 1878 of what?

Three-year-old Alyosha had inherited the condition from his father, and the grief runs through the novelist's final book.

Whose suggestion in 1816 that the company each write a ghost story led to Frankenstein?

Polidori's contribution became The Vampyre; Mary Shelley had earlier passed near Frankenstein Castle while travelling along the Rhine.

Whose free copies for soldiers overseas sparked The Great Gatsby's surge in popularity?

The paperbacks handed to soldiers overseas turned a modest seller into a fixture of American high school reading lists.

Fitzgerald's title The Great Gatsby was inspired by which French novel?

Rejected titles included Trimalchio in West Egg, The Gold-Hatted Gatsby and The High-Bouncing Lover.

Who was named as author of the spurious 1614 sequel to Don Quixote?

The unidentified Aragonese author was an admirer of Cervantes' rival Lope de Vega; Cervantes has Quixote encounter the fake book in Chapter 59.