Literary Hodgepodge

Question: Who is the only one of Milton’s contemporaries to be mentioned by name in Paradise Lost?

Answer: Paradise Lost contains frequent allusions to Galileo and his telescope, but only one mention of the astronomer by name. The two men met once, in 1638, while Galileo was under house arrest in Italy.

Question: Which of these works was not written by Franz Kafka?

Answer: Leaves of Grass is collection of poetry by Walt Whitman. It went through nine very different editions in his lifetime, the last of which was published in 1892, the year of his death.

Question: Which of these books is by Dashiell Hammett?

Answer: Dashiell Hammett’s 1930 novel The Maltese Falcon is considered a classic of crime fiction.

Question: Which of these is not a story by Edgar Allan Poe?

Answer: The Lottery is a well-known story by the American writer Shirley Jackson. It was published in 1948.

Question: W. Somerset Maugham’s 1919 novel The Moon and Sixpence is based on the life of what artist?

Answer: The Moon and Sixpence was inspired by the life of Paul Gauguin, the French Primitivist who is particularly famed for his Tahiti paintings.

Question: What Ernest Hemingway novel is set in Cuba?

Answer: The Old Man and the Sea is about a Cuban fisherman and his battle with a giant fish. Ernest Hemingway wrote it in 1952.

Question: Which of these books is not by Thomas Hardy?

Answer: The Catcher in the Rye is by American novelist J.D. Salinger. The other novels are by the English writer Thomas Hardy (1840–1928).