Classic Literature Quiz
Opening lines, whaling ships and a green light: 15 questions on the books everyone should know.
Which novel begins with the line "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times"?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
A Tale of Two Cities
Charles Dickens opens his 1859 novel of London and Paris during the French Revolution with that famous string of contrasts, which runs on for a full paragraph.
A Tale of Two Cities is often cited as one of the best-selling novels of all time, with estimates running well past 200 million copies.
Who wrote "Pride and Prejudice"?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Jane Austen
Jane Austen published Pride and Prejudice in 1813, introducing Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy in a comedy of manners about marriage and money in Regency England.
Austen first drafted the book as First Impressions in the 1790s, and her father's offer of it to a London publisher was rejected without a reading.
In Herman Melville's "Moby-Dick," what is the name of Captain Ahab's ship?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
The Pequod
Ahab hunts the white whale aboard the Pequod, a Nantucket whaler named after a Native American people of New England, with a crew drawn from around the world.
The Hispaniola sails in Treasure Island, the Nautilus in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, and the Endurance was Shackleton's real Antarctic ship.
Which Russian author wrote "Crime and Punishment"?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Fyodor Dostoevsky published Crime and Punishment in 1866, following the student Raskolnikov through the guilt that follows his murder of a St. Petersburg pawnbroker.
Dostoevsky wrote the novel under heavy gambling debts and had once faced a firing squad in 1849 before his death sentence was commuted to Siberian labor.
"Call me Ishmael" is the opening line of which novel?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Moby-Dick
Herman Melville's narrator introduces himself with those three words at the start of Moby-Dick, published in 1851, before signing on for a whaling voyage.
Moby-Dick sold poorly in Melville's lifetime and was largely forgotten until critics revived it in the 1920s, a century after it was written.
Which literary movement is associated with writers like Ernest Hemingway and the "Lost Generation"?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Modernism
Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald and their Paris circle of the 1920s belong to Modernism, which broke with 19th-century forms after the shock of the First World War.
Gertrude Stein coined the phrase "a lost generation" and Hemingway used it as an epigraph to The Sun Also Rises in 1926.
Who wrote "1984"?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
George Orwell
George Orwell published Nineteen Eighty-Four in 1949, giving the language Big Brother, doublethink and Room 101, and died of tuberculosis seven months later.
Orwell wrote the book on the Scottish island of Jura, and the title is thought to be simply the year he finished the draft, 1948, with the digits reversed.
In "The Great Gatsby," what color is the light at the end of Daisy's dock?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Green
Gatsby stares across the bay at the green light on Daisy Buchanan's dock, and Fitzgerald ends the novel by turning it into a symbol of the American dream always just out of reach.
The Great Gatsby sold fewer than 25,000 copies before Fitzgerald died in 1940; free copies sent to soldiers in the Second World War helped make it a classic.
Which novel by Charlotte Brontë features the character Mr. Rochester?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Jane Eyre
Edward Rochester is the brooding master of Thornfield Hall who employs Jane as a governess in Jane Eyre, published in 1847 under the pen name Currer Bell.
Wuthering Heights is by Charlotte's sister Emily, and all three Brontë sisters published under the male-sounding names Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell.
In C.S. Lewis's children's classics, which magical land do the Pevensie children first enter through a wardrobe?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Narnia
Lucy Pevensie pushes through the fur coats of an old wardrobe into Narnia in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, published in 1950 as the first of seven books.
Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien, creator of Middle-earth, were close friends who read their drafts aloud to the Inklings writing group in Oxford.
Who wrote "One Hundred Years of Solitude"?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Gabriel García Márquez
Gabriel García Márquez published One Hundred Years of Solitude in 1967, tracing seven generations of the Buendía family in the invented town of Macondo.
García Márquez won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1982, and the novel has sold more than 50 million copies in over 40 languages.
In which century was "Don Quixote" by Miguel de Cervantes first published?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
17th century
The first part of Don Quixote appeared in Madrid in 1605 and the second in 1615, placing both squarely in the 17th century.
Cervantes died in April 1616, the same month as Shakespeare, and the two are honored together on World Book Day every 23 April.
Which author created the detective Sherlock Holmes?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Arthur Conan Doyle
Arthur Conan Doyle introduced Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson in A Study in Scarlet in 1887 and went on to write four novels and 56 short stories about them.
Doyle killed Holmes off at the Reichenbach Falls in 1893, but public outcry was so fierce that he brought the detective back a decade later.
"To Kill a Mockingbird" is set in which fictional Alabama town?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Maycomb
Harper Lee set her 1960 novel in Maycomb, a sleepy Alabama county seat modeled on her own hometown, during the Depression years of the 1930s.
Lee based the character Dill on her childhood friend Truman Capote, who later took her along to Kansas to help research In Cold Blood.
Which epic poem, attributed to Homer, tells the story of the Trojan War?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
The Iliad
The Iliad covers a few weeks in the final year of the Trojan War, centered on the rage of Achilles and ending with the funeral of Hector.
The famous wooden horse is never described in the Iliad; it appears in the Odyssey and, in most detail, in Virgil's Latin epic the Aeneid.
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All Literature quizzes →About the Classic Literature Quiz
Some sentences never wear out. "Call me Ishmael" has opened Moby-Dick since 1851, Dickens set the pattern for every dramatic opening with his "best of times", and the green light at the end of Daisy's dock has been shining in classrooms since 1925. Between those famous lines sit Homer's warriors, Cervantes's deluded knight, the Brontë sisters, Dostoevsky's guilty student and a wardrobe that leads somewhere else entirely.
These 15 questions range across the Western canon and beyond, from ancient Greek epic to Latin American magical realism, testing opening lines, characters, authors and literary movements. The questions suit anyone who studied literature at school or university and readers who simply want to see how many of the classics they remember. Each answer comes with an explanation and an extra fact about the book or its writer.
You will find 15 multiple choice questions here, each with four options. Difficulty: Easy. Most people finish in about 6 minutes, and every answer comes with a short explanation and one extra fact worth keeping.
How to play
Read the question and pick one of the four answers. The correct answer is revealed straight away with a short explanation, then press Next question to keep going. At the end you get your score out of 15 and a full review of your round. Play again any time and the questions arrive in a fresh order. There is no timer and no account.
Good to know before you play
How many questions are in the Classic Literature Quiz?
There are 15 multiple-choice questions, covering famous opening lines, authors, characters and settings from Homer and Cervantes through Dickens, Austen, Melville and Fitzgerald.
Which authors does the quiz include?
Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, Herman Melville, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Ernest Hemingway, George Orwell, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Charlotte Brontë, C.S. Lewis, Gabriel García Márquez, Cervantes, Arthur Conan Doyle, Harper Lee and Homer.
How difficult is the Classic Literature Quiz?
It is an easy quiz for anyone who reads. Most questions turn on the best-known facts about each book, and a couple, such as the century Don Quixote appeared, need a little more thought.
Answer key: all 15 questions with explanations
- Which novel begins with the line "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times"?
A Tale of Two Cities Charles Dickens opens his 1859 novel of London and Paris during the French Revolution with that famous string of contrasts, which runs on for a full paragraph. A Tale of Two Cities is often cited as one of the best-selling novels of all time, with estimates running well past 200 million copies. - Who wrote "Pride and Prejudice"?
Jane Austen Jane Austen published Pride and Prejudice in 1813, introducing Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy in a comedy of manners about marriage and money in Regency England. Austen first drafted the book as First Impressions in the 1790s, and her father's offer of it to a London publisher was rejected without a reading. - In Herman Melville's "Moby-Dick," what is the name of Captain Ahab's ship?
The Pequod Ahab hunts the white whale aboard the Pequod, a Nantucket whaler named after a Native American people of New England, with a crew drawn from around the world. The Hispaniola sails in Treasure Island, the Nautilus in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, and the Endurance was Shackleton's real Antarctic ship. - Which Russian author wrote "Crime and Punishment"?
Fyodor Dostoevsky Fyodor Dostoevsky published Crime and Punishment in 1866, following the student Raskolnikov through the guilt that follows his murder of a St. Petersburg pawnbroker. Dostoevsky wrote the novel under heavy gambling debts and had once faced a firing squad in 1849 before his death sentence was commuted to Siberian labor. - "Call me Ishmael" is the opening line of which novel?
Moby-Dick Herman Melville's narrator introduces himself with those three words at the start of Moby-Dick, published in 1851, before signing on for a whaling voyage. Moby-Dick sold poorly in Melville's lifetime and was largely forgotten until critics revived it in the 1920s, a century after it was written. - Which literary movement is associated with writers like Ernest Hemingway and the "Lost Generation"?
Modernism Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald and their Paris circle of the 1920s belong to Modernism, which broke with 19th-century forms after the shock of the First World War. Gertrude Stein coined the phrase "a lost generation" and Hemingway used it as an epigraph to The Sun Also Rises in 1926. - Who wrote "1984"?
George Orwell George Orwell published Nineteen Eighty-Four in 1949, giving the language Big Brother, doublethink and Room 101, and died of tuberculosis seven months later. Orwell wrote the book on the Scottish island of Jura, and the title is thought to be simply the year he finished the draft, 1948, with the digits reversed. - In "The Great Gatsby," what color is the light at the end of Daisy's dock?
Green Gatsby stares across the bay at the green light on Daisy Buchanan's dock, and Fitzgerald ends the novel by turning it into a symbol of the American dream always just out of reach. The Great Gatsby sold fewer than 25,000 copies before Fitzgerald died in 1940; free copies sent to soldiers in the Second World War helped make it a classic. - Which novel by Charlotte Brontë features the character Mr. Rochester?
Jane Eyre Edward Rochester is the brooding master of Thornfield Hall who employs Jane as a governess in Jane Eyre, published in 1847 under the pen name Currer Bell. Wuthering Heights is by Charlotte's sister Emily, and all three Brontë sisters published under the male-sounding names Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell. - In C.S. Lewis's children's classics, which magical land do the Pevensie children first enter through a wardrobe?
Narnia Lucy Pevensie pushes through the fur coats of an old wardrobe into Narnia in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, published in 1950 as the first of seven books. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien, creator of Middle-earth, were close friends who read their drafts aloud to the Inklings writing group in Oxford. - Who wrote "One Hundred Years of Solitude"?
Gabriel García Márquez Gabriel García Márquez published One Hundred Years of Solitude in 1967, tracing seven generations of the Buendía family in the invented town of Macondo. García Márquez won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1982, and the novel has sold more than 50 million copies in over 40 languages. - In which century was "Don Quixote" by Miguel de Cervantes first published?
17th century The first part of Don Quixote appeared in Madrid in 1605 and the second in 1615, placing both squarely in the 17th century. Cervantes died in April 1616, the same month as Shakespeare, and the two are honored together on World Book Day every 23 April. - Which author created the detective Sherlock Holmes?
Arthur Conan Doyle Arthur Conan Doyle introduced Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson in A Study in Scarlet in 1887 and went on to write four novels and 56 short stories about them. Doyle killed Holmes off at the Reichenbach Falls in 1893, but public outcry was so fierce that he brought the detective back a decade later. - "To Kill a Mockingbird" is set in which fictional Alabama town?
Maycomb Harper Lee set her 1960 novel in Maycomb, a sleepy Alabama county seat modeled on her own hometown, during the Depression years of the 1930s. Lee based the character Dill on her childhood friend Truman Capote, who later took her along to Kansas to help research In Cold Blood. - Which epic poem, attributed to Homer, tells the story of the Trojan War?
The Iliad The Iliad covers a few weeks in the final year of the Trojan War, centered on the rage of Achilles and ending with the funeral of Hector. The famous wooden horse is never described in the Iliad; it appears in the Odyssey and, in most detail, in Virgil's Latin epic the Aeneid.
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