Major Literary Figures

Question 1

Aeschylus (525 - 456 BC)

Answer 1

Ancient Greek dramatist specialized in tragedies amount them Prometheus Bound

Question 2

Aesop (c. 620 - 560 BCE)

Answer 2

Ancient Greek Fabulist whose allegorical fables have inspired many writers

Question 3

Dante Aligheri (1265 - 1321)

Answer 3

Early Renaissance Italian writer is called the father of modern literature. his Divine Comedy is one of literature’s great triumph’s

Question 4

Sherwood Anderson (1876 - 1941)

Answer 4

American short - story writer whose most famous collection is Winesburg, Ohio

Question 5

Jane Austen (1775-1817)

Answer 5

19th century English author whose novels include Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice and Emma

Question 6

Honore de Balzac (1799 - 1850)

Answer 6

Early 19th century French Writer best known for his series La Comedie Humaine

Question 7

Samual Beckett (1906 - 1989)

Answer 7

Irish born French novelist and playwright whose Existentialist works include Malloy and Waiting for Godot

Question 8

Saul Bellow (1915 - 2005)

Answer 8

American novelist awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1976. His works include the novels Herzog and Humbolt’s Gift

Question 9

William Blake (1757 - 1827)

Answer 9

British artist, poet, and engraver who wrote Songs of Innocence and Experience

Question 10

Charlotte Bronte (1816 -1855)

Answer 10

English novelist, sister to Emily, who wrote under the pen name Currer Bell. Best known for the novels Jane Eyre and Shirley

Question 11

Emily Bronte (1818 - 1848)

Answer 11

One of three literary sisters, this English novelist wrote under the pen name Ellis Bell. Her novel Wuthering heights is considered one of the great Romantic novels

Question 12

John Bunyan (1628 - 1688)

Answer 12

English preacher and writer of allegorical stories, most famously The Pilgrim’s Progress

Question 13

Lord George Byron (1788 - 1824)

Answer 13

Prominent Romantic Poet Known for his adventurous life and writings. Important works include Don Juan and Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage

Question 14

Albert Camus (1913 - 1960)

Answer 14

French Writer and existentialist best known for his novels The Stranger and The Plague

Question 15

Lewis Carroll (Charles Dodgson) (1832 - 1898)

Answer 15

Prominent British Writer, mathematician and artist, Carroll wrote the classic children’s tale Alice in Wonderland and Through the looking Glass

Question 16

Miguel de Cervantes

Answer 16

Spanish writer whose book Don Quixote is considered the first modern novel

Question 17

Geoffrey Chaucer (c.1340 - 1400)

Answer 17

Early English poet who wrote the influential The CanterburyTales

Question 18

Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

Answer 18

Late 19th - early 20th century Russian playwright and the short story writer who wrote The seagull and the cherry Orchard

Question 19

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Answer 19

One of the first English Romantics, widely remembered for “the Rime of the Ancient Mariner” together with William Wordsworth, he published Lyrical Ballads in 1798

Question 20

Sidonie - Gabrielle Colette (1873 -1954)

Answer 20

Late 19th century French female author who published the Claudine novels as well as The Innocent Wife

Question 21

Joseph Conrad (1857 - 1924)

Answer 21

Polish - Born British writer whose most famous books are the novella Heart of Darkness and the novel Under Western Eyes

Question 22

Stephen Crane (1871 - 1900)

Answer 22

American author of the Civil War novel Red Badge of Courage

Question 23

Charles Dickens (1812 - 1870)

Answer 23

English writer immensely popular with his Victorian audience . A contemporary of Thomas Hardy. Some important works are A Tale of Two Cities, Great Expectations and A Christmas Carol

Question 24

Emily Dickenson (1830 - 1886)

Answer 24

One of Americans 19th century poets whose emotional poems were never published in her lifetime

Question 25

John Donne (1572 - 1631)

Answer 25

English writer, essayist and religious scholar considered the greatest of the metaphysical poets due to his highly original poems including “the Flea” and “Death Be Not Proud”

Question 26

Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821 - 1881)

Answer 26

Prominent Russian novelist whose major works include Crime and Punishment and the Idiot

Question 27

Theodore Dreiser (1871 - 1945)

Answer 27

American writer of the naturalist school whose novels include Sister Carrie and An American Tragedy

Question 28

George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans) (1819 - 1880)

Answer 28

Victorian female novelist who wrote the realist novels Middlemarch and Adam Bede

Question 29

T.S. Elliot (1888 - 1965)

Answer 29

American born British Modernist poet who wrote the obscure and referential poems “The Waste Land” and “the Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”

Question 30

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 - 1882)

Answer 30

Important American Transcendentalist writer and philosopher. The mentor of Thoreau, he wrote the essay Nature

Question 31

Euripedes (c. 480 - 406 BCE)

Answer 31

Along with the Sophocles and Aeschylus a preeminent Ancient Greek Dramatist

Question 32

William Faulkner (1897 - 1962)

Answer 32

Acclaimed American Southern novelist had a major influence on contemporary literature. Some major works include The Sound and The Fury, Absolom! Absolum!, and As I Lay Dying

Question 33

Scott F. Fitzgerald (1896 - 1940)

Answer 33

One of the 20th century’s literary stars, his writing chronicled the Jazz Age. His novel the Great Gatsby is consideded an American Master piece

Question 34

Gustave Flaubert (1821 - 1880)

Answer 34

French writer who coined the phrase le mot juste (the perfect word) and had notoriously meticulous style. His masterpiece is Madame Bovary

Question 35

Robert Frost (1874 - 1963)

Answer 35

Popular American poet of the 20th century who penned such a notable poem as stopping by woods on a snowy evening and Mending a Wall

Question 36

Allen Ginsberg (1926 - 1997)

Answer 36

American Beat poet and active political figure who became the face of a generation’s underground. Perhaps his most famous work is the collection Howl

Question 37

Johann Wolfsgang von Goethe (1749 -1832)

Answer 37

Prominent German writer, critic and scientist is most famous for his classic Faust

Question 38

Dashiell Hammett (1894 - 1961)

Answer 38

Popular American writer of noir or detective, fiction. many novels including Maltese Falcon and the Thin Man became stressful movies.

Question 39

Thomas Hardy (1840 -1928)

Answer 39

One of the great English writers of the 19th century, his popular novels include Far from the Madding Crowd and Tess of the D’Urbervilles

Question 40

Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804 -1864)

Answer 40

Important 19th century American writer who wrote celebrated novels and short stories, including the Scarlet Letter and “the Minister’s Black Veil”

Question 41

Ernest Hemingway (1899 - 1961)

Answer 41

Holds place as one of America’s most influential writers due to a terse style honed as a journalist. Best Known among his works are the novels The Sun Also Rises and A Farewell to Arms

Question 42

Hermann Hesse (1877-1962)

Answer 42

Swiss born German writer who wrote often about the duality of life. His novels include Siddhartha and Steppenwolf

Question 43

Homer (c. 850 BCE)

Answer 43

Ancient Greek Writer, sometimes called the father of literature. His epics Iliad and Odyssey are two of history’s most important achievements

Question 44

Langston Hughes (1902 - 1976)

Answer 44

Twentieth century African American poet who helped shape the Harlem Renaissance. Major works include Weary Blues and Selected poems

Question 45

Victor Hugo (1802 - 1885)

Answer 45

Prominent Victorian French novelist who wrote Les Miserables

Question 46

Henry James (1843 - 1916)

Answer 46

Expatriate American Writer and critic at the turn of the 19th century whose novels include The Turn of the Screw and Daisy Miller

Question 47

Samuel Johnson (1709 - 1784)

Answer 47

The leading thinker of his era, this English writer wrote the first modern dictionary in 1755

Question 48

James Joyce (1882 - 1941)

Answer 48

Irish author is one of the towering figures of modern literature due to his ground breaking narratives, shown most spectacularly in the novels Ulysses and Finnegan’s Wake

Question 49

Franz Kafka (1883 - 1924)

Answer 49

German Existentialist novelist who penned the classic The Metamorphosis

Question 50

John Keats (1795 - 1821)

Answer 50

English Romantic poet who wrote “Ode to a nightingale” and “Ode on a Grecian Urn” among many others

Question 51

Jack Kerouc (1922 - 1969)

Answer 51

American Beat Poet and novelist and voice of the counterculture who wrote On the Road.