Question: Which Victorian literary character's immortal words are these? "Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen pounds nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery."
Answer: Mr. Micawber from David Copperfield

Question: Which 17th century literary classic ends with the title character stipulating in his will that his niece will be disinherited if she marries anyone who reads about chivalry?
Answer: Don Quixote

Question: What term that is a mechanism for the disappearance of inconvenient documents comes from George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four in which it is a slot into which officials deposit records to be destroyed?
Answer: Memory hole

Question: Which 1895 poem, probably the best evocation of Victorian stoicism was once called "the essence of the message of The Gita (Bhagavad Gita) in English"?
Answer: If- by Rudyard Kipling

Question: Who wrote the 1942 short story Runaround that lists three laws one of which is stated below? 'A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm'
Answer: Isaac Asimov

Question: The main characters in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Volume One are Mina Murray, Allan Quatermain, Hawley Griffin, Jekyll/Hyde and Captain Nemo. Of these, everyone knows the books from where Jekyll/Hyde and Captain Nemo come from. What about the rest?
Answer: Mina Murray from Dracula, Allan Quatermain from King Solomon's Mines and Hawley Griffin from The Invisible Man

Question: Michel de Montaigne of France is best known for popularizing what kind of writing as a literary genre?
Answer: Essay

Question: In what story of Arthur C. Clarke do Tibetan monks seek to list all the names of God as they believe He will bring the Universe to an end once this is done?
Answer: The Nine Billion Names of God

Question: Similar to John Reed's Ten Days that Shook the World, which influential 1930s book by Edgar Snow is an account of the Communist Party of China?
Answer: Red Star Over China

Question: Which 1853 narrative poem of Matthew Arnold set in the orient tells the story of two feuding warrior-generals who, unknown to both, happen to be father and son?
Answer: Sohrab and Rustum

Question: Which 1902 short story by W. W. Jacobs is based on the premise of three wishes coming true but with an enormous price for interfering with fate?
Answer: The Monkey's Paw

Question: The murder of landlady Alena and the angst it causes in the psyche of the perpetrator is central to the plot of which 1866 literary classic?
Answer: Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky

Question: William Golding's Lord of the Flies was written as a response to which 1857 adventure novel by R. M. Ballantyne because Golding disagreed with the views that the book held?
Answer: The Coral Island

Question: Which recent literary Nobel laureate wrote in one of his memoirs "Istanbul's fate is my fate"?
Answer: Orhan Pamuk

Question: The 19th century criminal Adam West who was nicknamed the 'Napoleon of Crime' by Scotland Yard is speculated to be the inspiration behind the creation of which literary villain?
Answer: Professor Moriarty, the nemesis of Sherlock Holmes

Question: Which acclaimed 2003 book written from the perspective of a boy with Asperger's Syndrome takes its title from a remark made by Sherlock Holmes in the story Silver Blaze?
Answer: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time by Mark Haddon

Question: The 1987 nonfiction book And the Band Played On by Randy Shilts chronicles the discovery and spread of what modern horror?
Answer: Hiv/Aids

Question: About which author did Graham Greene say "It was as though ___ had put all his writing in a sieve out of which all the adjectives and adverbs fell out"?
Answer: Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961)

Question: The French word 'rastignac' that describes an ambitious social climber is from the name of a character in the La Comédie humaine series of novels by which author?
Answer: Honoré de Balzac (1799-1850)

Question: Margaret Garner, an enslaved African American woman in pre-Civil War America was notorious for killing her own daughter rather than allow the child to be returned to slavery. This story was the inspiration behind which classic 1987 American novel written by a Nobel Prize winning author?
Answer: Beloved by Toni Morrison

Question: The English novelist Sax Rohmer is best known for creating which prototypical ethnic villain who is now associated with a distinctive mustache?
Answer: Dr. Fu Manchu

Question: The literary world owes a big debt to actors John Heminges and Henry Condell who compiled what in 1623?
Answer: The First Folio (collection of Shakespeare's complete plays)

Question: The title of which 1959 play is the phrase that follows the lines 'What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like ...' in a Langston Hughes poem?
Answer: A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry

Question: 'The duke and the king' are characters that accompany the runaway lead pair in which classic American novel?
Answer: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Question: """Why is that you white people developed much cargo and brought it to New Guinea, but we black people had little cargo of our own?"" asked Yali.Which 1997 book is the author's attempt to answer this question?"
Answer: Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond

Question: 'The world is what it is; men who are nothing, who allow themselves to become nothing, have no place in it.' This unforgettable opening line is from which author's A Bend in the River and lent itself to the title of that authors authorized biography The World Is What It Is by Patrick French?
Answer: V. S. Naipaul

Question: The most-translated contemporary Italian writer at the time of his death in 1985, whose best known works are the Our Ancestors trilogy and the Cosmicomics collection of short stories?
Answer: Italo Calvino

Question: Which poetic drama that was first performed in 1935 draws on the writing of Edward Grim, a clerk who was a witness to a killing in 1170?
Answer: Murder in the Cathedral by T. S. Eliot

Question: What classic short story by the French writer Guy de Maupassant concerns an invisible malevolent spirit that aims to take control over the narrator?
Answer: The Horla

Question: 'Tis is the title of the sequel to which biographical 1996 book that is mainly about growing up poor in Ireland?
Answer: Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt

Question: Which 1961 non-fiction book by US journalist John Howard Griffin describes his six-week experience travelling on buses through racially segregated states while passing as a black man?
Answer: Black Like Me

Question: The title of which classic set in Africa is taken from a line in Yeats' poem The Second Coming and precedes the words 'the centre cannot hold'?
Answer: Things Fall Apart (1958)

Question: When R. L. Stevenson wrote the classic Treasure Island, he based the character of Long John Silver on which friend of his who wrote the poem Invictus?
Answer: William Ernest Henley (1849-1903)

Question: Which 1899 book by Thorstein Veblen that originated the phrase 'conspicuous consumption' is considered one of the first detailed critiques of consumerism?
Answer: The Theory of the Leisure Class

Question: What type of utensil that is frequently used in nonsense poetry first appeared in Edward Lear's best-known poem The Owl and the Pussycat?
Answer: Runcible spoon

Question: The 'Younger Memnon' statue of Ramesses II in the British Museum is thought to have inspired which famous poem of P. B. Shelley?
Answer: Ozymandias

Question: Which Norwegian fairy tale is about three goats who want to cross a bridge under which lurks a fearsome troll?
Answer: Three Billy Goats Gruff

Question: What 1908 satirical work by the Nobel Prize winning French author Anatole France describes a fictitious island of great auks that exists on the northern coast of Europe?
Answer: Penguin Island