Literature quiz questions and answers

34 free literature questions with answers: authors, first lines, characters and prizes, kept to books a room has heard of, not the ones it should have read.

Last reviewed 14 September 2026

How to use this round

A literature round can be the most enjoyable round of a night or the most alienating, and the deciding factor is whether the books are ones the room has met.

Children's books, thrillers, books that became films and first lines everybody knows all play well. A round built from the Booker shortlist does not, however good the books are.

It is also the category where a single question can carry a whole table: somebody at every table read something, and a literature round is where that person finally gets to contribute.

Easy

Books and authors almost everybody has encountered, often through the films.

1
Who wrote the Harry Potter series?
Answer: J. K. Rowling
2
Which Shakespeare play features the characters Romeo and Juliet?
Answer: Romeo and Juliet
3
Who wrote Oliver Twist and Great Expectations?
Answer: Charles Dickens
4
In which book would you find a character called Bilbo Baggins?
Answer: The Hobbit
5
Who wrote the poem 'The Raven'?
Answer: Edgar Allan Poe
6
Which author created the detective Sherlock Holmes?
Answer: Arthur Conan Doyle
7
What is the name of the bear in A. A. Milne's stories?
Answer: Winnie-the-Pooh
8
Who wrote Pride and Prejudice?
Answer: Jane Austen
9
Which novel begins in a wardrobe leading to a snowy land?
Answer: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
10
Who wrote The Very Hungry Caterpillar?
Answer: Eric Carle
11
Which Roald Dahl book features a golden ticket?
Answer: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
12
Who wrote Nineteen Eighty-Four?
Answer: George Orwell

Medium

Authors, characters and first lines. The middle of a literature round.

13
Which novel opens with 'It was the best of times, it was the worst of times'?
Answer: A Tale of Two Cities
14
Who wrote Frankenstein?
Answer: Mary Shelley
15
In Moby-Dick, what is the name of the ship's captain?
Answer: Captain Ahab
16
Which author wrote the Discworld series?
Answer: Terry Pratchett
17
Who wrote Things Fall Apart?
Answer: Chinua Achebe
18
What is the name of the narrator in The Great Gatsby?
Answer: Nick Carraway
19
Which Brontë sister wrote Wuthering Heights?
Answer: Emily Brontë
20
Who wrote One Hundred Years of Solitude?
Answer: Gabriel García Márquez
21
In which Shakespeare play does the line 'To be, or not to be' appear?
Answer: Hamlet
22
Which novel features a character called Atticus Finch?
Answer: To Kill a Mockingbird
23
Who wrote The Handmaid's Tale?
Answer: Margaret Atwood
24
Which Dickens novel features the character Ebenezer Scrooge?
Answer: A Christmas Carol

Hard

For a tie-break, or one at the end of a round for the table with a reader on it.

25
Who wrote the epic poem Paradise Lost?
Answer: John Milton
26
Which novel begins 'Call me Ishmael'?
Answer: Moby-Dick
27
Who wrote In Search of Lost Time?
Answer: Marcel Proust
28
Which Russian novelist wrote Crime and Punishment?
Answer: Fyodor Dostoevsky
29
What is the name of the fictional county in which many of William Faulkner's novels are set?
Answer: Yoknapatawpha County
30
Who wrote the play Waiting for Godot?
Answer: Samuel Beckett
31
Which poet wrote 'The Waste Land'?
Answer: T. S. Eliot
32
Who was the first woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature?
Answer: Selma Lagerlöf
33
Which novel by Joseph Conrad inspired the film Apocalypse Now?
Answer: Heart of Darkness
34
Who wrote Don Quixote?
Answer: Miguel de Cervantes

First lines make the best round

Read the opening line, name the book. It is the best literature round format there is because a famous first line is recognisable even to people who never finished the book.

Five is plenty. Ten first lines in a row starts to feel like a lecture.

Books that became films

The other format that works: name the book the film was based on. It brings in everyone who has seen the film and nobody feels excluded for not having read it.

It also cross-pollinates nicely with a film round, which means you can write one set of research and get two rounds out of it.

Build a first-lines round

Custom packs handle multiple-choice and true-or-false, which is the right shape for a first-lines round on phones.

Start free, no card needed