Famous Authors Quiz
Tolkien, Christie, Kafka and the woman who wrote the first novel: 15 questions on the world's great authors.
Who wrote The Lord of the Rings?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
J. R. R. Tolkien
Tolkien, an Oxford professor of Anglo-Saxon, wrote the trilogy over twelve years as a sequel to The Hobbit, publishing it in three volumes in 1954 and 1955.
He invented complete languages for his elves before writing the stories, saying the tales were created to give the languages a world to live in.
Which author created the Belgian detective Hercule Poirot?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Agatha Christie
Christie introduced the fastidious little detective with the egg shaped head in her first novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, in 1920, and used him in 33 novels.
When Poirot died in the 1975 novel Curtain, The New York Times ran a front page obituary for a fictional character.
Who wrote The Old Man and the Sea, the story of a Cuban fisherman's battle with a giant marlin?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Ernest Hemingway
Hemingway published the novella in 1952, won the Pulitzer Prize for it in 1953, and it was cited when he received the Nobel Prize in Literature the following year.
The whole book first appeared in a single issue of Life magazine, which sold more than five million copies in two days.
Which Canadian author wrote The Handmaid's Tale?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Margaret Atwood
Atwood published her dystopian novel about the theocratic Republic of Gilead in 1985, and she returned to its world with the sequel The Testaments in 2019.
Atwood has said she included nothing in the book that humans had not already done somewhere at some time.
Which Russian author wrote War and Peace?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Leo Tolstoy
Tolstoy's epic of Russian society during the Napoleonic Wars was published in full in 1869 and follows five aristocratic families, including the Rostovs and Bolkonskys, over about fifteen years.
His wife Sophia copied out the enormous manuscript by hand several times as he revised it.
Who wrote Frankenstein, first published in 1818?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Mary Shelley
Mary Shelley began the novel at eighteen during a rainy summer on Lake Geneva in 1816, after Lord Byron challenged his guests to each write a ghost story.
The first edition was published anonymously, and many readers assumed it had been written by her husband, the poet Percy Shelley.
Mark Twain was the pen name of which American writer?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Samuel Clemens
Samuel Langhorne Clemens took his pen name from a Mississippi riverboat call meaning two fathoms deep, the safe depth for a steamboat, and used it from 1863.
He was born in 1835 as Halley's Comet appeared and predicted he would go out with it; he died in 1910, the day after its return.
Who wrote both The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Alexandre Dumas
Dumas published both adventure novels as newspaper serials in 1844 and 1845, working with collaborators and producing stories at a pace few writers have matched.
His father, a general in Napoleon's army, was the son of a French nobleman and an enslaved African woman from Saint-Domingue.
Which author wrote The Metamorphosis, in which Gregor Samsa wakes to find himself transformed into a giant insect?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Franz Kafka
Kafka, a Prague insurance clerk who wrote in German, published the novella in 1915; its blend of the ordinary and the nightmarish gave the language the word Kafkaesque.
He asked his friend Max Brod to burn his unpublished manuscripts after his death. Brod refused, and The Trial and The Castle survived.
What was the real name of the author who wrote as George Orwell?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Eric Arthur Blair
Eric Blair adopted the name George Orwell for his first book, Down and Out in Paris and London, in 1933, taking the surname from a river in Suffolk.
He was born in India, served as a colonial policeman in Burma and was shot through the throat while fighting in the Spanish Civil War.
Which Oxford mathematician wrote Alice's Adventures in Wonderland under the name Lewis Carroll?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Charles Dodgson
Charles Lutwidge Dodgson taught mathematics at Christ Church and invented the story for the dean's daughters, including the real Alice Liddell, on a boat trip in 1862.
He made the pen name by translating Charles Lutwidge into Latin, reversing the order and translating it back.
Which Nigerian author wrote the 1958 novel Things Fall Apart?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Chinua Achebe
Achebe's story of the Igbo leader Okonkwo and the arrival of British missionaries has sold more than 20 million copies and is the most widely read African novel.
The title comes from W. B. Yeats's poem The Second Coming, which declares that things fall apart and the centre cannot hold.
Which American novelist, the author of Beloved, became the first Black woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Toni Morrison
The Swedish Academy praised Morrison's novels for their visionary force and poetic import, and Beloved, based on a true story of an escaped enslaved woman, had won the Pulitzer in 1988.
Before her own novels appeared, Morrison worked as an editor at Random House, where she championed Black writers including Toni Cade Bambara and Gayl Jones.
Who was the first woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, in 1909?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Selma Lagerlöf
The Swedish novelist Selma Lagerlöf, author of Gösta Berling's Saga and The Wonderful Adventures of Nils, was honoured for the lofty idealism and vivid imagination of her writing.
In 1914 she also became the first woman elected to the Swedish Academy, the body that awards the prize.
Which Japanese court lady wrote The Tale of Genji, often called the world's first novel?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Murasaki Shikibu
Murasaki Shikibu, a lady in waiting at the Heian court, composed her long tale of the shining prince Genji and his loves in the early eleventh century.
Her rival Sei Shōnagon wrote The Pillow Book at the same court, and Murasaki's diary dismisses her as conceited.
Your results
More to explore
All Literature quizzes →About the Famous Authors Quiz
Behind every famous book is a story about its author. George Orwell and Mark Twain never existed under those names, the world's first novel was written by a Japanese noblewoman a thousand years ago, and the first woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature did so in 1909 for stories about a boy flying on a goose.
These 15 questions ask who wrote the classics, from The Lord of the Rings and War and Peace to Things Fall Apart and Beloved, then move on to pen names and literary firsts from around the world. It suits anyone who reads, and it is a good warm up for a pub quiz literature round.
You will find 15 multiple choice questions here, each with four options. Difficulty: Medium. 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
What kinds of authors does this quiz cover?
English, American, Russian, French, Czech, Nigerian, Swedish and Japanese writers, from the eleventh century to the late twentieth.
Are there pen name questions?
Yes. Three questions ask for the real names behind famous pen names, including Mark Twain and George Orwell.
Is this quiz suitable for students?
Yes. Most questions cover authors found on school and university reading lists, with a couple of harder ones for literature fans.
Answer key: all 15 questions with explanations
- Who wrote The Lord of the Rings?
J. R. R. Tolkien Tolkien, an Oxford professor of Anglo-Saxon, wrote the trilogy over twelve years as a sequel to The Hobbit, publishing it in three volumes in 1954 and 1955. He invented complete languages for his elves before writing the stories, saying the tales were created to give the languages a world to live in. - Which author created the Belgian detective Hercule Poirot?
Agatha Christie Christie introduced the fastidious little detective with the egg shaped head in her first novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, in 1920, and used him in 33 novels. When Poirot died in the 1975 novel Curtain, The New York Times ran a front page obituary for a fictional character. - Who wrote The Old Man and the Sea, the story of a Cuban fisherman's battle with a giant marlin?
Ernest Hemingway Hemingway published the novella in 1952, won the Pulitzer Prize for it in 1953, and it was cited when he received the Nobel Prize in Literature the following year. The whole book first appeared in a single issue of Life magazine, which sold more than five million copies in two days. - Which Canadian author wrote The Handmaid's Tale?
Margaret Atwood Atwood published her dystopian novel about the theocratic Republic of Gilead in 1985, and she returned to its world with the sequel The Testaments in 2019. Atwood has said she included nothing in the book that humans had not already done somewhere at some time. - Which Russian author wrote War and Peace?
Leo Tolstoy Tolstoy's epic of Russian society during the Napoleonic Wars was published in full in 1869 and follows five aristocratic families, including the Rostovs and Bolkonskys, over about fifteen years. His wife Sophia copied out the enormous manuscript by hand several times as he revised it. - Who wrote Frankenstein, first published in 1818?
Mary Shelley Mary Shelley began the novel at eighteen during a rainy summer on Lake Geneva in 1816, after Lord Byron challenged his guests to each write a ghost story. The first edition was published anonymously, and many readers assumed it had been written by her husband, the poet Percy Shelley. - Mark Twain was the pen name of which American writer?
Samuel Clemens Samuel Langhorne Clemens took his pen name from a Mississippi riverboat call meaning two fathoms deep, the safe depth for a steamboat, and used it from 1863. He was born in 1835 as Halley's Comet appeared and predicted he would go out with it; he died in 1910, the day after its return. - Who wrote both The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo?
Alexandre Dumas Dumas published both adventure novels as newspaper serials in 1844 and 1845, working with collaborators and producing stories at a pace few writers have matched. His father, a general in Napoleon's army, was the son of a French nobleman and an enslaved African woman from Saint-Domingue. - Which author wrote The Metamorphosis, in which Gregor Samsa wakes to find himself transformed into a giant insect?
Franz Kafka Kafka, a Prague insurance clerk who wrote in German, published the novella in 1915; its blend of the ordinary and the nightmarish gave the language the word Kafkaesque. He asked his friend Max Brod to burn his unpublished manuscripts after his death. Brod refused, and The Trial and The Castle survived. - What was the real name of the author who wrote as George Orwell?
Eric Arthur Blair Eric Blair adopted the name George Orwell for his first book, Down and Out in Paris and London, in 1933, taking the surname from a river in Suffolk. He was born in India, served as a colonial policeman in Burma and was shot through the throat while fighting in the Spanish Civil War. - Which Oxford mathematician wrote Alice's Adventures in Wonderland under the name Lewis Carroll?
Charles Dodgson Charles Lutwidge Dodgson taught mathematics at Christ Church and invented the story for the dean's daughters, including the real Alice Liddell, on a boat trip in 1862. He made the pen name by translating Charles Lutwidge into Latin, reversing the order and translating it back. - Which Nigerian author wrote the 1958 novel Things Fall Apart?
Chinua Achebe Achebe's story of the Igbo leader Okonkwo and the arrival of British missionaries has sold more than 20 million copies and is the most widely read African novel. The title comes from W. B. Yeats's poem The Second Coming, which declares that things fall apart and the centre cannot hold. - Which American novelist, the author of Beloved, became the first Black woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993?
Toni Morrison The Swedish Academy praised Morrison's novels for their visionary force and poetic import, and Beloved, based on a true story of an escaped enslaved woman, had won the Pulitzer in 1988. Before her own novels appeared, Morrison worked as an editor at Random House, where she championed Black writers including Toni Cade Bambara and Gayl Jones. - Who was the first woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, in 1909?
Selma Lagerlöf The Swedish novelist Selma Lagerlöf, author of Gösta Berling's Saga and The Wonderful Adventures of Nils, was honoured for the lofty idealism and vivid imagination of her writing. In 1914 she also became the first woman elected to the Swedish Academy, the body that awards the prize. - Which Japanese court lady wrote The Tale of Genji, often called the world's first novel?
Murasaki Shikibu Murasaki Shikibu, a lady in waiting at the Heian court, composed her long tale of the shining prince Genji and his loves in the early eleventh century. Her rival Sei Shōnagon wrote The Pillow Book at the same court, and Murasaki's diary dismisses her as conceited.
Browse other categories
Every category has its own quizzes, each with instant explanations.