Christmassy questions​

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'Twas the Night before Christmas when all through the house, not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse‚' What is the next line of Clement Clark Moore's 1837 poem?

'The stockings were hung by the chimney with care, in hopes that Saint Nicholas soon would be there'.

 

And can you name the 8 reindeer listed in 'Twas the Night Before Christmas'?

Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Donder (or Donner - depending on version) and Blitzen

 

From which town did Dr Seuss's Grinch steal Christmas?

Whoville

Whyville

Whereville

Whoville

 

Who says 'Christmas won't be Christmas without any presents'?

Jo March in 'Little Women'

Katy in 'What Katy Did'

Laura in 'Little House on the Prairie'

Jo March in 'Little Women' (1868)

 

In the first book of C S Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia, 'The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe', what present does Father Christmas give Lucy?

A bow and arrows

A shield and sword

A healing cordial and a dagger

A healing cordial and a dagger

  

In which literary work does a man dressed as a woman fall in love with a woman dressed as a man at Christmas?

William Shakespeare creates the ultimate love triangle in 'Twelfth Night' when Viola, disguised as a page boy falls for Orsino, while Olivia, the focus of Orsino's infatuation, falls for the disguised Viola

 

Which of Jane Austen's heroines rejects a clergyman on Christmas Eve by declaring that she has 'no thoughts of matrimony at present'?

Elizabeth Bennett

Emma Woodhouse

Catherine Moreland

Fanny Price

Emma Woodhouse, who has mistaken Mr Elton's intentions, and imagines that he wishes to marry her friend Harriet

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In 'Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone' (2001), what do the Dursleys give Harry for Christmas?

An invisibility cloak

Bertie Bott's vomit-flavoured jellybeans

A 50-pence piece

A 50-pence piece

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With whom was the young Ebenezer Scrooge in love in 'A Christmas Carol' by Charles Dickens?

Belle

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Name the ghosts in 'A Christmas Carol'.

Jacob Marley - the Ghost of Ebenezer Scrooge's business partner

The Ghost of Christmas Past

The Ghost of Christmas Present

The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come

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Which farm does the character Flora Poste visit at Christmas in a 1932 novel that parodies the romanticised, and sometimes doom-laden, accounts of rural life then popular in fiction?

Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons (1902-1989)

 

 

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Children's Literature​

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In which magazine - the longest-running British weekly comic for children, first published in 1938 - does Dennis the Menace appear?

The Beano

 

Greg Heffley is the fictional writer of which diary, which has formed the basis of twelve hugely popular books by Jeff Kinney?

Diary of a Wimpy Kid

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What is the name of the heroic but naïve cart-horse horse in George Orwell's allegorical novella, 'Animal Farm' (1945)?

Boxer

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Which comic-book hero is accompanied on his adventures by a dog called Snowy?

Tintin, the creation of Belgian cartoonist Georges Remi, known as Hergé (1907-1983)

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In C S Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia, what is the capital of the Kingdom of Narnia: a spectacular citadel and the location of the castle inhabited by its kings and queens during Narnia's early years?

- Cair Paravel

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What is the name of the faun Lucy meets when she first enters the magical world of Narnia?

Mr Tumnus

 

In Beatrix Potter's 1909 'Tale of Ginger and Pickles', what kind of animals were Ginger and Pickles?

Ginger was a yellow tom-cat, and Pickles was a terrier

 

What character from Aesop's Fables 'worked hard all summer long while the fun-loving grasshopper played'?

The industrious ant

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'Boggis, Bunce and Bean, one short, one fat, one lean' 

Which fantastic children's book do these three crooks feature in?  

'Fantastic Mr Fox' (1970) by Roald Dahl (1916-1990).  The couplet goes on, 'These horrible crooks so different in looks were nonetheless equally mean!'

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What do the witches in Roald Dahl's book of that name want to turn all children into?

Mice

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In 'Charlotte's Web' (1952) by E B White, which of these words does not appear in one of Charlotte's webs?

Terrific

Radiant

Crunchy

Humble

Crunchy

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What animal was Dab-Dab in the Doctor Dolittle series written by Hugh Lofting between the 1920s and 1950s?

A duck

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He's known as Charlie in France, Walter in Germany, Willy in Norway, Waldo in the US and Canada, and Effy in Israel. What's his name in the UK?

Wally, from the 'Where's Wally?' books created by British illustrator Martin Handford

 

 

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A little bit of  Shakespeare

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Which play by William Shakespeare begins with a king dividing his kingdom between his three daughters, Goneril, Regan and Cordelia?

'King Lear' (written between 1603 and 1606)

 

Which Shakespearean comedy is mainly set in the Forest of Arden?

'As You Like It' (1603)

 

In which play by William Shakespeare do the characters Bianca, Rodrigo and Lodovico appear?

'Othello' (1603)

 

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Classic fiction

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What is the name of the convict who secretly funds Pip's good fortune in 'Great Expectations' by Charles Dickens?

Abel Magwitch

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What is the name of the eldest Bennet daughter in Jane Austen's 'Pride and Prejudice'?

Jane Bennet

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And what is the name of the youngest Bennet daughter, and who does she marry?

Lydia Bennet marries Mr George Wickham

 

What is the name of Sherlock Holmes's landlady at 221b Baker Street?

Mrs Hudson

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And the name of Sherlock Holmes's most wily and worthy adversary?

Professor James Moriarty

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What is the family name of the main two characters in George Eliot's 1860 novel 'The Mill on the Floss'?

Tulliver (Maggie and her brother Tom)

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What was the name of Bill Sykes's dog in 'Oliver Twist' by Charles Dickens?

Bullseye

 

In which book does the character Colonel Fitzwilliam, the eligible younger son of an Earl, appear?

'Pride and Prejudice' (1813)  by Jane Austen

 

What is the name of the Vicar in E M Forster's 1908 novel 'Room with a View'

Mr Beebe

 

The philosopher and advocate of women's rights Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797) died 11 days after giving birth her to second daughter, who grew up to become an author.  Who was she and which world-famous book did she write?

Mary Shelley (1797-1851) wrote 'Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus' in 1818

 

Which Cambridge don read his splendidly terrifying ghost stories - many of them set in East Anglia - to his students on dark winter nights?

Montague Rhodes James (1862-1936), aka M R James

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Modern British writing

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'I write this sitting in the kitchen sink.  That is, my feet are in it.' Is the memorable first line of which well-loved coming-of-age story, written in 1949?

'I Capture the Castle' by Dodie Smith (1896-1990)

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 'The Go-Between' by L. P. Hartley (1895-1972) starts with the sentence 'The past is a _______ _______: ___ __ ______ ___________ _____.'  The line is often described as the greatest opening in modern English literature.

'The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.'

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Which British Prime Minister was awarded a Nobel Prize for Literature?

Winston Churchill was awarded the prize in 1953 for his 'mastery of historical and biographical description as well as for brilliant oratory in defending exalted human values.'

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Which author penned 'The Dig', a 2007 novel set in the context of the 1939 archaeological dig that uncovered the Anglo-Saxon site at Sutton Hoo, Suffolk.  The book has since been made into a film starring Ralph Fiennes.

John Preston

 

Where did the eponymous heroine Rebecca live?

Manderley, in Daphne du Maurier's 1938 novel, 'Rebecca'

 

Which cookery writer was appointed Dame of the British Empire in the 2020 Birthday Honours?

Mary Berry

 

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American literature

 

What famous location in New York is the title of a novel by Henry James (1843-1916)?

Washington Square

 

By what name was the writer Samuel Langhorne Clemens (1835-1910) better known?

Mark Twain

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What is the name of Scarlett O'Hara's home in Margaret Mitchell's 1936 novel, 'Gone With The Wind'? 

Tara, in Clayton County, Georgia

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Which book by Donna Tartt  (b 1963) was made into a film in 2019 starring Ansel Elgort and Nicole Kidman?

'The Goldfinch' (2013)

 

Can you name the four sisters in Louisa May Alcott's 1868 novel 'Little Women'?

Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy

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What pronoun is also the title of American author Stephen King's 22nd novel?

'It' (1986)

 

Harper Lee's second novel was published in 2015, fifty-four years after her Pulitzer Prize-winning first novel, 'To Kill a Mockingbird'.  What is the second novel called?

'Go Set a Watchman'

 

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Miscellaneous​

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Which Colombian author wrote 'One Hundred Years of Solitude' (1967), the pivotal novel of the Latin American Magical Realist style?

Gabriel García Márquez (1927-2014)

 

The protagonist of several novels by Dan Brown teaches at which educational institution at Boston in the USA?

Robert Langdon is a professor of History of Art at Harvard University and features in the Da Vinci code series

 

Can you name Irish author Sally Rooney's debut novel, which was published in 2017 just a year before her massive success with 'Normal People'?

'Conversations with Friends'

 

By what name was the writer Eric Arthur Blair (1903-1950) better known?

George Orwell

 

Ben Whishaw is set to play a junior doctor in a forthcoming television series 'This is Going to Hurt'.  What is the name of the author and former doctor on whose diary, kept during six years of medical training, the series is based?

Adam Kay

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What is the title of Margaret Atwood's dystopian novel published in 1985 and its Booker Prize winning sequel published in 2019?

'The Handmaid's Tale' and 'The Testaments'

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Famous last words

Please give title and author if you can!

 

'And the ashes blew towards us with the salt wind from the sea.'

'Rebecca' (1938) by Daphne du Maurier (1907-1989)

 

'So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.'

'The Great Gatsby' (1925) by F Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940)

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'After all, tomorrow is another day.'

'Gone with the Wind' (1936) by Margaret Mitchell (1900-1949)

 

'He loved Big Brother'

1984 (1948) by George Orwell (1903-1950)

 

'The old man was dreaming about the lions.'

'The Old Man and the Sea' (1952) by Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961)

 

'The tranquil waterway leading to the uttermost ends of the earth flowed sombre under an overcast sky - seemed to lead into the heart of an immense darkness.'

'Heart of Darkness' (1899) by Joseph Conrad (1857-1924)

 

'It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.'

'A Tale of Two Cities' (1859) by Charles Dickens (1812-1870)

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'And so, as Tiny Tim observed, God Bless Us, every one!'

'A Christmas Carol' (1843) by Charles Dickens (1812-1870)

 

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