Quiz Bowl - British Literature

Holy Sonnets

A collection of 14-line poems which includes “Death be Not Proud,” a work by John Donne.

(Harold) Pinter

The author of The Birthday Party, who also created the hitmen Ben and Gus in The Dumbwaiter.

(William) Wordsworth

The poet of The Prelude who collaborated with Samuel Coleridge on Lyrical Ballads

Elizabeth (Barrett) Browning

This Victorian author of Sonnets from the Portuguese included the poems “Yes, call me by my pet name” and “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways” in her most famous collection.

(Robert) Burns

The Scottish poet who wrote “A Red, Red Rose”, “To a Mouse”, and “Auld Lang Syne”.

The Dead

In this story, Gretta explains that waiting in the rain while sick led to the death of her childhood love Michael Furey. This story ends with Gabriel Conroy watching snow fall through a window. This is the last story from James Joyce’s Dubliners.

(Oliver) Goldsmith

The creator of Kate Hardcastle and Charles Marlow wrote about Olivia’s seduction by Squire Thornhill, the landlord of the Primrose family. The author of She Stoops to Conquer and The Vicar of Wakefield.

(Alfred, Lord) Tennyson

The author describes Nature as “red in tooth and claw” and notes “‘Tis better to have loved and lost / Than never to have loved at all.” Another poem by this author of “Crossing the Bar” recounts how the title military force rode “half a league onward” into “the valley of Death.” This is the British poet of “In Memoriam A.H.H.” and “The Charge of the Light Brigade.”

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead

The title characters of this play end up on a ship after a performance of The Murder of Gonzago. In this play, a series of coin flips results in heads 92 times in a row. This is an absurdist play centered around the title courtiers from Hamlet, by Tom Stoppard.

(Samuel) Beckett

This playwright of Krapp’s Last Tape and Endgame wrote a play whose set features a solitary tree. That play features much hat-swapping and a nonsensical monologue by Lucky after he is instructed to think by Pozzo. This playwright created Vladimir and Estragon in Waiting for Godot.

Frankenstein

A group of witnesses including Daniel Nugent testifies against this novel’s title character in front of Mr. Kirwin during a trial. The protagonist of this novel learns modern chemistry under the tutelage of M. Krempe and M. Waldman. A character in this novel observes the exiled De Lacey family before framing Justine Moritz for the murder of a young child. This novel is told through a series of letters to Margaret Saville from the ship captain Robert Walton.

The Taming of the Shrew

For 211 years, the only version of this play performed was a David Garrick adaptation with a balcony for a Pedant. This play’s events are imagined as “the best dream that ever I had in my life” by a drunkard who is dressed in noble clothes. A discussion of falconry appears in this play in the same act that a woman explains she was “bedazzled with the sun” when she mistook Vincentio for a maid. “Fie fie! unknit that threatening unkind brow” opens this play’s last speech, which is responded to with the phrase “Come on and kiss me.” A man who desires to “wive it wealthily in Padua” in this play is the abusive Petruchio.

(Thomas) Hardy

The author of Jude the Obscure and Tess of the d'Urbervilles.

Sherlock Holmes

This character’s author stated that his most ingenious actions occur before being attacked by the Cunninghams in Reigate. Under the name Altamont, this character opens a safe with the combination “August 1914,” owned by the German agent Von Bork. “Fred Porlock” sends this character a warning about a Mr. Douglas at Birlstone, who had posed as Jack McMurdo to defeat the Scowrers and was actually Birdy Edwards. This character captures the vengeful lover of Lucy Ferrier, who was forced into a Mormon marriage despite her love for the cab driver Jefferson Hope, in A Study in Scarlet.

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem about a sailor's lengthy voyage.

The Merchant of Venice

A character in this play tells Gobbo that “our house is hell” before sending him off with gold and a letter for Lorenzo. In a scene from this play, a pair of gloves and two wedding rings are requested by two women disguised as Stephano and Balthazar in return for their services as lawyers. In this play, the phrase “Whoever chooseth me must give and hazard all he hath” is engraved on a lead casket that is chosen by Bassanio to win Portia’s hand in marriage. Antonio is sued by Shylock, a Jewish moneylender, for a pound of flesh in this comedy.

Dubliners

The collection of stories titled for an Irish city by James Joyce

(John) Keats

The speaker of a poem by this author is "Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards / But on the viewless wings of Poesy" and notes "tender is the night." A work by this poet about Cynthia's love for the title shepherd prince begins "A thing of beauty is a joy forever." This author of Endymion ("en-DIM-ee-on") and Hyperion asks "What men or gods are these?" in a poem to an "Attic shape" that ends "Beauty is truth, truth beauty." This is the subject of Percy Shelley's Adonais who wrote "Ode on a Grecian Urn."

Great Expectations

This novel's ending was changed according to the advice of the author's contemporary Edward Bulwer-Lytton. The protagonist of this novel is accosted in a graveyard and agrees to steal a file for a prisoner. A character in this novel has a room full of stopped clocks and continues to wear her wedding dress. In this novel, the convict Abel Magwitch is arrested by the police. Miss Havisham (HAV-ish-um) raises Estella, whom the main character of this book falls in love with.

A Room With A View

This novel's protagonist breaks off an engagement to the snobbish Cecil Vyse. At the beginning of this novel, the protagonist arrives in the Pension Bertolini in Florence with her cousin Charlotte Bartlett, and meets George Emerson while complaining about not being given the title accommodation. This novel is about Lucy Honeychurch and is by E.M. Forster.

A Modest Proposal

A satirical essay by Jonathan Swift, which suggests that poor people should sell their children to be eaten by the rich.

Ozymandias

This poem uses the Petrarchan sonnet form in a nontraditional ababa cdcdc efef rhyme scheme. A figure in this poem who “stamped on these lifeless things... passions read” is referenced as “the hand that mocked them and the hand that fed”. Its final lines depicts its subject “boundless and bare” as “lone and level sands stretch far away”. This poem is framed as the story of “a traveler from an antique land” who describes a “half sunk” and “shattered visage” near “two vast and trunkless legs of stone”

Paradise Lost

One character in this work has her bowels torn at by dogs begotten with her son, and another character takes the form of a toad after deceiving the Regent of the Sun, Uriel. After describing the work of the architect Mulciber, proposals from Belial and Mammon are heard in a council held in Pandemonium before Beelzebub’s proposal is accepted, and Sin and Death are made ambassadors on Earth after two other characters consume fruit from the Tree of Knowledge. This poem depicts the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden.