Literature is the quiz round that gets underestimated at almost every quiz night I've ever been involved with. Before the questions start, at least half the table will say something along the lines of not being much of a reader. Then the children's books round starts and those same people are answering every single question because it turns out reading everything Roald Dahl wrote between the ages of seven and ten counts as literature too, and they remember every word.
Books make great quiz material because literary knowledge comes from so many different directions. You pick it up in school, in conversation, from films based on books, from general cultural osmosis. People who say they don't read are often surprised by how much they know about classic novels they've never opened, just from being alive in a culture that references them constantly. It's one of those topics that rewards breadth of engagement with the world rather than just hours spent with the specific source material.
Fifty questions covering five areas: classic novels (the canon), British literature (where the home advantage shows), American literature (where it often doesn't), children's books (the competitive one), and poetry and authors (biographical facts about the people behind the work). The children's books round is almost always the highest-scoring, which tells you something about how deeply that stuff embeds.
These work well as a standalone literature quiz or as a books round in a broader pub quiz. If you want to balance the difficulty, put the children's books round in the middle — it gives everyone a moment of confidence before you hit them with the poetry questions.
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Round 1: Classic Novels (Questions 1–10)
1. Who wrote "Pride and Prejudice"?
✓ Jane Austen
💡 Jane Austen published Pride and Prejudice in 1813, originally writing an earlier version titled "First Impressions" in 1797. The novel's opening line — "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife" — is one of the most famous in English literature.
2. In which novel does the character Holden Caulfield appear?
✓ The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
💡 Published in 1951, The Catcher in the Rye has sold over 65 million copies and remains a staple of school curricula across the English-speaking world. J.D. Salinger was famously reclusive after its success and refused to allow the book to be adapted into a film.
3. Which novel begins with the line "Call me Ishmael"?
✓ Moby-Dick by Herman Melville
💡 Herman Melville published Moby-Dick in 1851 and it was largely ignored during his lifetime, selling fewer than 4,000 copies before his death. It was only in the 20th century that critics recognised it as one of the greatest American novels ever written.
4. What is the name of the manor house in Emily Brontë's "Wuthering Heights"?
✓ Wuthering Heights (the house shares the novel's name)
💡 Emily Brontë published Wuthering Heights in 1847 under the male pseudonym "Ellis Bell" because female authors faced serious prejudice at the time. It remains the only novel she ever published; she died of tuberculosis just a year after it appeared.
5. In "Don Quixote," who is the protagonist's loyal squire?
✓ Sancho Panza
💡 Don Quixote, published by Miguel de Cervantes in two parts (1605 and 1615), is often cited as the first modern novel. The pairing of the idealistic Don Quixote and the pragmatic Sancho Panza has become one of literature's most enduring double-acts.
6. Who wrote "Anna Karenina"?
✓ Leo Tolstoy
💡 Leo Tolstoy published Anna Karenina serially between 1875 and 1877, and the novel is widely considered one of the greatest works of world literature. Tolstoy himself reportedly dismissed it as inferior to War and Peace, which he also wrote.
7. In George Orwell's "1984," what is the name of the totalitarian state?
✓ Oceania
💡 George Orwell wrote 1984 while seriously ill with tuberculosis on the Scottish island of Jura, completing it in 1948 — the year is thought to be the title with the last two digits reversed. Many of its concepts, such as "Big Brother" and "doublethink," have entered everyday language.
8. What is the subtitle of Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein"?
✓ The Modern Prometheus
💡 Mary Shelley began writing Frankenstein in 1816 during the famous "Year Without a Summer" as part of a ghost-story competition with Percy Shelley and Lord Byron at Villa Diodati in Geneva. She was just 18 years old when she conceived the story.
9. In Fyodor Dostoevsky's "Crime and Punishment," what crime does the protagonist Raskolnikov commit?
✓ Murder (he kills a pawnbroker and her sister with an axe)
💡 Published in 1866, Crime and Punishment is a psychological study of guilt, morality, and redemption rather than a conventional crime thriller. Dostoevsky reportedly drew on his experience of being condemned to death (then reprieved) and serving four years in a Siberian labour camp.
10. What is the name of the whale in "Moby-Dick"?
✓ Moby Dick (the White Whale)
💡 The novel was partly inspired by the real-life sinking of the Essex, an American whaling ship rammed and sunk by a sperm whale in 1820. Herman Melville had also heard accounts of a real albino sperm whale known as "Mocha Dick" that was feared by whalers.
Round 2: British Literature (Questions 11–20)
11. Which Shakespeare play features the characters Iago and Desdemona?
✓ Othello
💡 Othello was written around 1603 and is considered one of Shakespeare's four great tragedies, alongside Hamlet, King Lear, and Macbeth. Iago is consistently ranked among literature's greatest villains for the psychological complexity of his malice.
12. Who wrote "Great Expectations"?
✓ Charles Dickens
💡 Great Expectations was published serially in Dickens's weekly literary magazine All the Year Round between 1860 and 1861. The novel features one of literature's most memorable characters, the jilted Miss Havisham, who famously still wears her wedding dress decades later.
13. In "The Lord of the Rings," what is the name of the land of the elves that Frodo eventually sails to?
✓ Valinor (also accepted: the Undying Lands)
💡 J.R.R. Tolkien published The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers in 1954 and The Return of the King in 1955, having worked on the mythology for decades. Tolkien invented entire languages for Middle-earth, including Quenya and Sindarin for the elves.
14. What is the pen name of the author Mary Ann Evans, who wrote "Middlemarch"?
✓ George Eliot
💡 Mary Ann Evans adopted the male pen name George Eliot partly to ensure her work was taken seriously by critics who routinely dismissed women's writing as light fiction. Middlemarch (1871–72) is frequently voted the greatest novel in the English language.
15. In which city is much of Charles Dickens's "Oliver Twist" set?
✓ London
💡 Oliver Twist was published serially between 1837 and 1839 and was the first novel in the English language to feature a child as its protagonist. The novel drew public attention to the brutal conditions of Victorian workhouses and London's criminal underworld.
16. Who wrote the dystopian novel "Brave New World"?
✓ Aldous Huxley
💡 Aldous Huxley published Brave New World in 1932, and it has since become one of the most influential dystopian novels ever written. Unlike 1984's bleak world of oppression through fear, Brave New World depicts a society controlled through pleasure and conditioning.
17. What is the name of the vicar in Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice" who proposes to Elizabeth Bennet?
✓ Mr. Collins
💡 Mr. Collins is widely regarded as one of Austen's finest comic creations — a pompous, obsequious clergyman whose self-importance is matched only by his social cluelessness. He is a cousin of Mr. Bennet and stands to inherit Longbourn due to the entail on the estate.
18. Which British author wrote "Rebecca," beginning with the line "Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again"?
✓ Daphne du Maurier
💡 Daphne du Maurier published Rebecca in 1938 and it has never been out of print. Alfred Hitchcock's 1940 film adaptation won the Academy Award for Best Picture, making it the only Best Picture winner based on a du Maurier work.
19. What is the first name of Mr. Darcy in "Pride and Prejudice"?
✓ Fitzwilliam
💡 Fitzwilliam Darcy's full name is rarely used in the novel and is only revealed in chapter 16 when his cousin Colonel Fitzwilliam is introduced. The name "Fitzwilliam" was a traditional aristocratic surname used as a given name, signalling Darcy's elevated social standing.
20. Who wrote "The Picture of Dorian Gray"?
✓ Oscar Wilde
💡 The Picture of Dorian Gray was published in 1890 and remains Oscar Wilde's only novel. It caused a scandal upon publication, with critics calling it immoral; Wilde revised it for book publication in 1891, adding a preface defending the role of art and the artist.
Round 3: American Literature (Questions 21–30)
21. Who wrote "The Great Gatsby"?
✓ F. Scott Fitzgerald
💡 F. Scott Fitzgerald published The Great Gatsby in 1925 to modest sales and mixed reviews during his lifetime. It was only after World War II, when the novel was distributed to American soldiers, that it found a mass audience and became the celebrated classic it is today.
22. In Harper Lee's "To Kill a Mockingbird," who is the lawyer who defends Tom Robinson?
✓ Atticus Finch
💡 To Kill a Mockingbird was published in 1960 and won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction the following year. Harper Lee reportedly based Atticus Finch partly on her own father, Amasa Coleman Lee, who was also a lawyer and defended Black clients in Alabama.
23. Which American author wrote "The Old Man and the Sea"?
✓ Ernest Hemingway
💡 The Old Man and the Sea was published in 1952 and is widely credited with influencing the Nobel Committee's decision to award Hemingway the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954. The novel was inspired by a real old fisherman Hemingway had heard about while living in Cuba.
24. In "Of Mice and Men," what is the name of the large, gentle character who cares for rabbits?
✓ Lennie Small
💡 John Steinbeck published Of Mice and Men in 1937 and it was immediately acclaimed, running on Broadway the same year. Despite its relatively short length, the novella is a profound study of friendship, ambition, and the American Dream in the Great Depression era.
25. Who wrote "The Scarlet Letter"?
✓ Nathaniel Hawthorne
💡 Published in 1850, The Scarlet Letter is set in Puritan Boston in the 17th century and explores themes of sin, guilt, and redemption. Hawthorne reportedly felt guilt over his ancestor John Hathorne's role as a judge in the 1692 Salem witch trials, which influenced his dark themes.
26. Which American poet wrote "The Road Not Taken"?
✓ Robert Frost
💡 "The Road Not Taken" was published in 1916 and is one of the most quoted — and most misunderstood — poems in American literature. Frost wrote it as a gentle tease about his indecisive friend Edward Thomas; the poem's irony is that both roads were "really about the same."
27. What is the name of the narrator in F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby"?
✓ Nick Carraway
💡 Nick Carraway is Gatsby's neighbour in West Egg on Long Island and is the novel's first-person narrator throughout. His position as an outsider — from the Midwest, not the aristocracy — gives him a unique perspective on the glittering but hollow world of the wealthy elite.
28. Who wrote the poem "The Raven"?
✓ Edgar Allan Poe
💡 "The Raven" was published in January 1845 and made Poe famous virtually overnight, though he was reportedly paid only about $9 for it. The poem's hypnotic metre — trochaic octameter — and the raven's refrain of "Nevermore" have made it one of the most recognised poems ever written.
29. In "The Grapes of Wrath," which direction do the Joad family migrate?
✓ West (from Oklahoma to California)
💡 John Steinbeck won the Pulitzer Prize for The Grapes of Wrath in 1940 and the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962, with this novel cited as a key reason. The book was banned and burned in some communities due to its unflattering portrayal of conditions in California's agricultural camps.
30. Who wrote "Beloved," which won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1988?
✓ Toni Morrison
💡 Beloved was based on the true story of Margaret Garner, an enslaved woman who killed her daughter rather than allow her to be taken back into slavery. Toni Morrison was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993, becoming the first Black woman to receive the honour.
Round 4: Children's Books (Questions 31–40)
31. Who wrote "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory"?
✓ Roald Dahl
💡 Roald Dahl published Charlie and the Chocolate Factory in 1964 and it has since sold over 20 million copies worldwide. Dahl drew inspiration from his childhood memories of Cadbury sending chocolate samples to schoolchildren for testing during the 1930s.
32. In "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe," what is the name of the magical land the children discover?
✓ Narnia
💡 C.S. Lewis published The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe in 1950 as the first of his seven Chronicles of Narnia books, though the intended reading order has long been debated. Lewis dedicated the book to his god-daughter Lucy Barfield, the inspiration for protagonist Lucy Pevensie.
33. What is the name of the rabbit in Beatrix Potter's famous tale?
✓ Peter Rabbit
💡 Beatrix Potter originally self-published The Tale of Peter Rabbit in 1901 after it was rejected by several publishers. Frederick Warne & Co. later published it commercially in 1902 and it became an immediate bestseller, making it one of the best-selling books of all time with over 45 million copies sold.
34. Who is the author of the "His Dark Materials" trilogy, which begins with "Northern Lights"?
✓ Philip Pullman
💡 Philip Pullman published Northern Lights (published as The Golden Compass in North America) in 1995, winning the Carnegie Medal for children's literature. The trilogy's depiction of the Church attracted controversy, but it is widely celebrated as one of the finest works of modern fantasy.
35. In A.A. Milne's "Winnie-the-Pooh," what is the name of Pooh's human friend?
✓ Christopher Robin
💡 A.A. Milne based Christopher Robin on his real son, Christopher Robin Milne, who later reportedly found the fame associated with the character uncomfortable. The original toy animals that inspired the Pooh stories — including the real Winnie-the-Pooh teddy — are on display at the New York Public Library.
36. What is the full name of the boy who never grows up in J.M. Barrie's famous play?
✓ Peter Pan
💡 J.M. Barrie first introduced Peter Pan in a 1902 novel before the famous stage play debuted in 1904. Barrie gifted the copyright to Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children in London in 1929, providing the hospital with royalty income that has continued in a special legal form to this day.
37. In which book would you find the character Katniss Everdeen?
✓ The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
💡 The Hunger Games was published in 2008 and became one of the bestselling young adult series of all time, with over 100 million copies sold worldwide. Suzanne Collins has said the novel was partly inspired by the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur and by channel-surfing between reality TV and news coverage of the Iraq War.
38. What creature acts as a guide for Alice in "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland"?
✓ The White Rabbit
💡 Lewis Carroll (the pen name of Charles Dodgson) first told the story of Alice's adventures to Alice Liddell, the young daughter of his Oxford colleague, during a boat trip in 1862. The published version appeared in 1865 with illustrations by John Tenniel.
39. In "The Very Hungry Caterpillar," what does the caterpillar turn into at the end of the story?
✓ A beautiful butterfly
💡 Eric Carle published The Very Hungry Caterpillar in 1969 and it has sold over 50 million copies, translated into more than 60 languages. Carle's distinctive collage illustration technique — using hand-painted tissue papers — became one of the most recognisable visual styles in children's publishing.
40. Who wrote the "Horrible Histories" children's book series?
✓ Terry Deary
💡 Terry Deary launched the Horrible Histories series in 1993 with the first volume, The Terrible Tudors. The books have sold over 25 million copies and spawned a long-running BAFTA-winning BBC television series known for its catchy musical sketches.
Round 5: Poetry & Authors (Questions 41–50)
41. Who wrote the epic poem "Paradise Lost"?
✓ John Milton
💡 John Milton published Paradise Lost in 1667, dictating it to scribes after he became totally blind. The poem retells the biblical story of Satan's rebellion and humanity's fall from paradise in 12 books of unrhymed iambic pentameter, or blank verse.
42. Which Romantic poet wrote "Ode to a Nightingale"?
✓ John Keats
💡 John Keats wrote "Ode to a Nightingale" in May 1819 in the garden of a friend's house in Hampstead, reportedly composing it in just a few hours. Keats died of tuberculosis two years later aged just 25, having only published three slim collections of poetry.
43. In which century did William Shakespeare live and work?
✓ The 16th and early 17th century (1564–1616)
💡 Shakespeare was born in Stratford-upon-Avon in April 1564 and died there on April 23, 1616, exactly 52 years later. He wrote 37 plays and 154 sonnets, and his works have been translated into every major language and are performed more often than those of any other playwright.
44. Which poet wrote "The Waste Land" in 1922?
✓ T.S. Eliot
💡 T.S. Eliot published The Waste Land in October 1922 in the very first issue of his literary journal The Criterion. Ezra Pound edited the original manuscript heavily, cutting it to roughly half its original length; Eliot dedicated the published poem to Pound, calling him "il miglior fabbro" (the better craftsman).
45. Who wrote the poem "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night"?
✓ Dylan Thomas
💡 Dylan Thomas wrote this villanelle in 1947 and it is believed to be addressed to his dying father. The poem's famous refrain "Rage, rage against the dying of the light" has become one of the most quoted lines in 20th-century poetry.
46. Under what pen name did Samuel Clemens write "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer"?
✓ Mark Twain
💡 Samuel Clemens adopted the pen name Mark Twain from a Mississippi riverboat term meaning two fathoms of water depth — just safe enough for a steamboat. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, his sequel to Tom Sawyer, is frequently called the first great American novel.
47. Which poet is known for the lines "How do I love thee? Let me count the ways"?
✓ Elizabeth Barrett Browning
💡 This line opens Sonnet 43 from Browning's collection Sonnets from the Portuguese, published in 1850. The collection was actually written privately as love poems to her husband Robert Browning and published only after he persuaded her to share them with the world.
48. Who was the first woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature?
✓ Selma Lagerlöf (1909)
💡 Swedish author Selma Lagerlöf won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1909, the first woman and the first Swedish author to receive the award. She is best known for The Wonderful Adventures of Nils, a children's book commissioned to teach Swedish geography that became a beloved classic.
49. Which poet wrote "The Canterbury Tales"?
✓ Geoffrey Chaucer
💡 Geoffrey Chaucer began writing The Canterbury Tales around 1387 and never completed the planned work — only 24 of the intended 120 tales were written. Written in Middle English, the Tales is considered the foundation stone of English literature and helped establish the legitimacy of writing in English rather than Latin or French.
50. Which American poet wrote "I heard a Fly buzz – when I died"?
✓ Emily Dickinson
💡 Emily Dickinson wrote nearly 1,800 poems during her lifetime but published fewer than a dozen of them. The vast majority of her work was discovered only after her death in 1886, and her unconventional dashes and slant rhymes were often "corrected" by early editors before scholars restored her original texts.
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Literature trivia has a nice habit of making people want to read things they previously thought weren't for them. A well-placed question about a novel someone's never considered can do more for a reading list than any recommendation — which is a slightly unexpected benefit of a pub quiz round.
Any errors or literature topics you'd like covered in a dedicated post — specific authors, genres, or periods — let us know at hello@simplyquizzes.com. More on the blog.