Literature trivia lets one shelf hold haunted houses, impossible journeys, sharp social comedies, and characters who make spectacularly bad decisions.
These 100 questions travel through novels, authors, characters, settings, opening lines, poetry, drama, children’s books, global fiction, and literary history.
Classic Novels on the Shelf
Begin with titles that have survived classrooms, adaptations, and countless arguments about the best character.
- Who wrote Pride and Prejudice?
Answer: Jane Austen, who published the novel in 1813 - What name does the narrator give at the start of Moby-Dick?
Answer: Ishmael - Which Charles Dickens novel follows an orphan who asks for more food?
Answer: Oliver Twist - Who wrote Wuthering Heights?
Answer: Emily Brontë - What is the name of Mr. Rochester’s estate in Jane Eyre?
Answer: Thornfield Hall - Who is the central student-turned-murderer in Crime and Punishment?
Answer: Rodion Raskolnikov - Which Russian author wrote War and Peace?
Answer: Leo Tolstoy - What is the real name of the Count of Monte Cristo?
Answer: Edmond Dantès - Does Mary Shelley give Frankenstein’s creature a personal name?
Answer: No. The novel never gives the creature a personal name - Who must wear the scarlet letter in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel?
Answer: Hester Prynne
Authors and Their Other Names
Pens, pseudonyms, and recurring detectives take center stage here, with a longer playwright encore in our Shakespeare trivia.
- What was Mark Twain’s birth name?
Answer: Samuel Langhorne Clemens - Which novelist used the pen name George Eliot?
Answer: Mary Ann Evans - What was George Orwell’s birth name?
Answer: Eric Arthur Blair - Which Belgian detective was created by Agatha Christie?
Answer: Hercule Poirot - Who created Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson?
Answer: Arthur Conan Doyle - Which Ernest Hemingway novel follows Jake Barnes and Lady Brett Ashley?
Answer: The Sun Also Rises - Who wrote Mrs Dalloway and To the Lighthouse?
Answer: Virginia Woolf - Which Toni Morrison novel centers on Sethe and the legacy of slavery?
Answer: Beloved - Who wrote One Hundred Years of Solitude?
Answer: Gabriel García Márquez - Which Nigerian novelist wrote Things Fall Apart?
Answer: Chinua Achebe
Characters With Main-Plot Energy
These characters have crossed drawing rooms, battlefields, school reading lists, and more than a few movie screens.
- Which Austen heroine initially clashes with Mr. Darcy?
Answer: Elizabeth Bennet - Who defends Tom Robinson in To Kill a Mockingbird?
Answer: Atticus Finch - Who narrates The Catcher in the Rye?
Answer: Holden Caulfield - What name was Jay Gatsby born with?
Answer: James Gatz - What is Scout’s given name in To Kill a Mockingbird?
Answer: Jean Louise Finch - Who rises from apprentice blacksmith to gentleman in Great Expectations?
Answer: Pip, formally Philip Pirrip - Which March sister dreams of becoming a writer in Little Women?
Answer: Jo March - Which obsessed captain hunts the white whale in Moby-Dick?
Answer: Captain Ahab - Whose portrait reveals the effects of his corruption and age?
Answer: Dorian Gray - Which formerly enslaved woman is the central character of Beloved?
Answer: Sethe
Fictional Places Worth the Trip
Pack lightly because this itinerary runs from magical kingdoms to desert planets. Fantasy travelers can continue with our Lord of the Rings trivia.
- What world does Lucy enter through a wardrobe in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe?
Answer: Narnia - Where is Dorothy’s home before the tornado carries her to Oz?
Answer: Kansas - What nation holds the Hunger Games?
Answer: Panem - What fictional town anchors One Hundred Years of Solitude?
Answer: Macondo - What fictional Mississippi county appears across many William Faulkner works?
Answer: Yoknapatawpha County - In what fictional Alabama town is To Kill a Mockingbird set?
Answer: Maycomb - What semi-fictional region provides the setting for many Thomas Hardy novels?
Answer: Wessex - Which city provides the setting for James Joyce’s Ulysses?
Answer: Dublin - What is the name of the theocratic state in The Handmaid’s Tale?
Answer: The Republic of Gilead - What desert planet is also called Dune?
Answer: Arrakis
Opening Lines and First Impressions
A strong first sentence can open a door, announce a disaster, or make a reader wonder why a house is spiteful.
- Which novel famously opens with “Call me Ishmael”?
Answer: Moby-Dick - Which Dickens novel begins by comparing the best and worst of times?
Answer: A Tale of Two Cities - Which Tolstoy novel opens by contrasting happy and unhappy families?
Answer: Anna Karenina - Which novel begins by calling a wealthy single man’s need for a wife a universal truth?
Answer: Pride and Prejudice - Which Toni Morrison novel opens with the terse statement “124 was spiteful”?
Answer: Beloved - Which Daphne du Maurier novel begins with a dream of Manderley?
Answer: Rebecca - Which Ray Bradbury novel opens with “It was a pleasure to burn”?
Answer: Fahrenheit 451 - Which novel begins with the sentence “Mrs Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself”?
Answer: Mrs Dalloway - Which Alice Walker novel tells its story largely through Celie’s letters?
Answer: The Color Purple - Which children’s novel opens by introducing Mr. and Mrs. Dursley of number four, Privet Drive?
Answer: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, titled Philosopher’s Stone in the United Kingdom
Literary Forms and Useful Terms
This round is the toolbox: forms, devices, and labels that help readers explain what a book is doing.
- How many lines does a traditional English or Shakespearean sonnet contain?
Answer: Fourteen - What is a bildungsroman?
Answer: A novel centered on a character’s growth or coming of age - What is an epistolary novel?
Answer: A novel told through letters, documents, or similar records - What does dystopian fiction typically portray?
Answer: An oppressive or deeply flawed imagined society - What is an unreliable narrator?
Answer: A narrator whose account cannot be fully trusted - Which mode blends realistic settings with matter-of-fact magical events?
Answer: Magical realism - What is an allegory?
Answer: A narrative whose characters or events carry a sustained second level of meaning - What does satire use humor or exaggeration to expose?
Answer: Folly, vice, or social and political problems - What is a frame narrative?
Answer: A story that contains or introduces one or more stories within it - What is dramatic irony?
Answer: A situation in which the audience knows something important that a character does not
Poetry and Drama Beyond the Novel
Poets and playwrights get the stage, from ancient epics to twentieth-century family drama.
- Who wrote Hamlet?
Answer: William Shakespeare - How many witches appear together in the opening act of Macbeth?
Answer: Three - Which villain manipulates Othello into distrusting Desdemona?
Answer: Iago - To whom are the Iliad and the Odyssey traditionally attributed?
Answer: Homer - Who guides Dante through most of Hell and Purgatory in the Divine Comedy?
Answer: The Roman poet Virgil - Who wrote the epic poem Paradise Lost?
Answer: John Milton - Which Edgar Allan Poe poem features a bird repeating “Nevermore”?
Answer: “The Raven” - Who wrote The Waste Land?
Answer: T. S. Eliot - Which playwright wrote A Raisin in the Sun?
Answer: Lorraine Hansberry - What term describes a long narrative poem about heroic deeds?
Answer: An epic
Children’s and Young Adult Literature
Some of the most memorable books arrive early, whether the doorway is a farm, a burrow, or a school of magic. Young wizards can keep reading in our Harry Potter trivia.
- What kind of animal is Wilbur in Charlotte’s Web?
Answer: A pig - Which four friends lead The Wind in the Willows?
Answer: Mole, Rat, Toad, and Badger - Who discovers the locked garden in The Secret Garden?
Answer: Mary Lennox - Who is recruited by Gandalf in The Hobbit?
Answer: Bilbo Baggins - Which Greek god is Percy Jackson’s father?
Answer: Poseidon - From which district does Katniss Everdeen come?
Answer: District 12 - What palindrome-like surname belongs to the main character in Holes?
Answer: Yelnats, the surname of Stanley Yelnats - Who is the central young heroine of A Wrinkle in Time?
Answer: Meg Murry - Who is selected as the Receiver of Memory in The Giver?
Answer: Jonas - On which Canadian island is Anne of Green Gables set?
Answer: Prince Edward Island
Modern and Global Fiction
The map expands with writers whose novels cross languages, nations, memories, and family histories.
- In which country is Things Fall Apart primarily set?
Answer: Nigeria - Which Japanese author wrote Norwegian Wood and Kafka on the Shore?
Answer: Haruki Murakami - Who wrote Half of a Yellow Sun?
Answer: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie - Which Canadian author wrote The Handmaid’s Tale?
Answer: Margaret Atwood - Who wrote Midnight’s Children?
Answer: Salman Rushdie - Which Nobel laureate wrote The Remains of the Day?
Answer: Kazuo Ishiguro - Which Turkish novelist wrote Snow and My Name Is Red?
Answer: Orhan Pamuk - Which country was Gabriel García Márquez from?
Answer: Colombia - What city gives Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Novels their descriptive name?
Answer: Naples - Which South Korean author wrote The Vegetarian?
Answer: Han Kang
Prizes, Publishing, and Literary History
Finish with award stages, publication dates, and movements that changed what reached readers’ hands.
- Who became the first woman awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature?
Answer: Selma Lagerlöf, in 1909 - Which U.S. prize includes an annual category for fiction?
Answer: The Pulitzer Prize - Which major prize honors eligible long-form fiction published in the United Kingdom or Ireland?
Answer: The Booker Prize - Which U.S. awards program includes annual honors for fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and young people’s literature?
Answer: The National Book Awards - In what year was James Joyce’s Ulysses first published as a book?
Answer: 1922 - In what year was Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein first published?
Answer: 1818 - Who founded Penguin Books with his brothers Richard and John?
Answer: Allen Lane - Which author of Mrs Dalloway was part of the Bloomsbury Group?
Answer: Virginia Woolf - Which Harlem Renaissance author wrote Their Eyes Were Watching God?
Answer: Zora Neale Hurston - Which Beat Generation novelist wrote On the Road?
Answer: Jack Kerouac
Sources and Further Reading
- Library of Congress literary collections
- Nobel Prize in Literature
- Pulitzer Prize winners
- The Booker Prize
- Poetry Foundation
Ellie Ewert is the founder and author of RandomTrivia.co, blending her passion for research with years of experience in content creation to deliver accurate, engaging, and well-sourced trivia. Dedicated to providing readers with trustworthy and entertaining facts, she applies meticulous fact-checking and SEO expertise to ensure every article meets the highest standards. Read more about our high standards in our Editorial Guidelines.