Literature Trivia: Famous Books and Authors to Know

The books round rewards readers who know a little history alongside the stories. You do not need to have read every classic — you need to know who wrote what, when, and the one surprising detail that quiz writers love. Here are 20 facts that come up again and again, with the context that makes them memorable.

Classic Novels and Plays

1. William Shakespeare wrote around 37 plays (some count 38 or 39, depending on collaborations) and over 150 sonnets. He is credited with introducing or popularising hundreds of English words and phrases.
2. Don Quixote is often called the first modern novel. Miguel de Cervantes published it in two parts, in 1605 and 1615.
3. Pride and Prejudice opens with one of fiction's most famous lines: "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife." Jane Austen published it in 1813, without her name on the cover.
4. Charles Dickens published most of his novels in instalments. Readers waited weeks or months for the next part, which is one reason his books are full of cliffhangers.
5. Frankenstein was written by a teenager. Mary Shelley began it at 18, during a famous ghost-story contest with Lord Byron and Percy Shelley in 1816. Frankenstein is the scientist, not the creature.
6. George Orwell was a pen name. The author of Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four was born Eric Arthur Blair.
7. Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace follows Russian aristocratic families through Napoleon's invasion of Russia, and is famous for its length — well over half a million words.

Authors and Pen Names

8. The Brontë sisters first published as men. Charlotte, Emily and Anne used the names Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell.
9. Mark Twain was Samuel Clemens. "Mark twain" was a riverboat call meaning two fathoms deep — safe water.
10. George Eliot was Mary Ann Evans. She chose a male name so that her work, including Middlemarch, would be taken seriously.
11. J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series is one of the best-selling book series of all time. Her publisher suggested initials so that young boys would not be put off by a female author.
12. Agatha Christie is among the best-selling novelists in history. She created both Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple, and her play The Mousetrap has run in London since 1952.
13. Dr. Seuss wrote Green Eggs and Ham using only 50 different words — the result of a bet with his publisher.

Records and Firsts

14. The Bible is the best-selling book of all time, and also the most translated.
15. The Nobel Prize in Literature was first awarded in 1901, to the French poet Sully Prudhomme.
16. Rabindranath Tagore was the first non-European Nobel laureate in Literature, in 1913. He also wrote the national anthems of India and Bangladesh.
17. The Tale of Genji, written by Murasaki Shikibu in Japan around the early 11th century, is often called one of the world's first novels.
18. The Epic of Gilgamesh, from ancient Mesopotamia, is among the oldest surviving works of literature.
19. Hans Christian Andersen and the Brothers Grimm gave us many of the fairy tales still told today — but the Grimms collected folk tales, while Andersen wrote his own.
20. "Sherlock Holmes" never says "Elementary, my dear Watson" in Arthur Conan Doyle's original stories. The line came later, from adaptations.

How Quiz Writers Use Literature

Literature questions tend to fall into a few patterns. Knowing them helps you prepare:

• "Who wrote...?" — the most common type. Learn the authors of the 50 or so most famous books and you will cover a large share of questions.
• Pen names — Orwell, Twain, Eliot and the Brontës appear constantly.
• Famous first lines — Pride and Prejudice, A Tale of Two Cities ("It was the best of times...") and Moby-Dick ("Call me Ishmael") are favourites.
• Character to book — Atticus Finch (To Kill a Mockingbird), Jay Gatsby (The Great Gatsby), Holden Caulfield (The Catcher in the Rye).

How to Study Books You Haven't Read

Nobody has read everything. A good trick is to learn each classic as a single sentence: author, year, and one hook. "Frankenstein — Mary Shelley, 1818, written at 18 during a ghost-story contest." One line per book is enough to answer most quiz questions, and it often makes you want to read the real thing.

Keep a few of these in your back pocket and any books round becomes easy points. Ready for a challenge? Start a free World Literature quiz and put your reading to the test.