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Who Wrote That Book #1

Can you name the authors of these famous books?
Quiz by Quizmaster
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Last updated: September 4, 2018
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First submittedDecember 23, 2012
Times taken82,011
Average score54.2%
Rating4.35
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Book
Author
1984
George Orwell
A Farewell to Arms
Ernest Hemingway
Anna Karenina
Leo Tolstoy
Catch-22
Joseph Heller
Crime and Punishment
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Don Quixote
Miguel de Cervantes
Gravity's Rainbow
Thomas Pynchon
Great Expectations
Charles Dickens
Gulliver's Travels
Jonathan Swift
Hamlet
William Shakespeare
Heart of Darkness
Joseph Conrad
Les Miserables
Victor Hugo
Book
Author
Lolita
Vladimir Nabokov
Lord of the Flies
William Golding
Madame Bovary
Gustave Flaubert
On the Road
Jack Kerouac
Slaughterhouse-Five
Kurt Vonnegut
The Bell Jar
Sylvia Plath
The Canterbury Tales
Geoffrey Chaucer
The Catcher in the Rye
J.D. Salinger
The Grapes of Wrath
John Steinbeck
The Great Gatsby
F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Iliad
Homer
Wuthering Heights
Emily Bronte
58 Comments
+5
Level 21
Mar 13, 2011
I missed a lot just because I didn't know exactly how to spell them.
+2
Level 57
Mar 29, 2011
All right my first try. Unfortunately my scores on the sports quizzes are very low.
+6
Level 26
Jun 9, 2021
gee, I wonder why
+3
Level 65
Jun 3, 2011
more like this please!
+2
Level 23
Sep 30, 2011
Great quiz. My spelling did me in though.
+9
Level 25
Jan 12, 2012
@luckydeadfish If you know he was born Eric Blair then you know the answer is George Orwell. If anyone tried Eric Blair before George Orwell then that's pure pretentiousness and frankly just ridiculous.
+5
Level 48
Apr 13, 2012
You shouldn't accept Eric Blair for Orwell. There's a reason he wrote the novel under a psuedonym. Obviously he didn't want to be known as Eric Blair when he put the novel out. And I agree, if you know that much about him, obviously you know he went by Orwell.
+3
Level 16
May 17, 2012
Never would've gotten the Flaubert one without competeing in Quiz Bowl
+2
Level 74
Dec 23, 2012
Me too, and same with Sylvia Plath.
+2
Level 21
Dec 23, 2012
How do I put a picture on a quiz that I created?
+2
Level 83
Nov 22, 2016
You can't, quizmaster will do it if the quiz is featured
+2
Level 25
Aug 1, 2012
Couldn't for the life of me spell Pynchon correctly.
+2
Level 34
Dec 24, 2012
got 20. and most of them i read over the past two years. don quixote was my favorite
+2
Level 33
Mar 5, 2013
Great quiz! More like it please!
+3
Level 46
Apr 25, 2014
Got all but one, even though I got them all according to the quiz. For the last one I put Charlotte Bronte and it accepted it!
+5
Level 73
Feb 7, 2015
Funny, Edward de Vere doesn't work for Hamlet, and "Greek Oral Tradition" doesn't work for the Odyssey :)
+2
Level 73
Feb 7, 2015
*Iliad
+3
Level 74
Feb 8, 2015
Please also accept Bacon for Hamlet
+9
Level 74
Feb 9, 2015
Bacon and Hamlet? Now I'm hungry for breakfast.
+1
Level 82
Nov 23, 2022
and a smoke?
+4
Level 65
Jul 2, 2015
(fifty) FIRST! haha :)
+2
Level 35
Jun 13, 2016
My mind blanked on Salinger for some reason. Got all the rest.
+2
Level 61
Oct 17, 2016
All right except Pynchon. Never heard of him.
+4
Level 78
Jul 13, 2017
"If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about answers." - Gravity's Rainbow
+4
Level 61
Oct 17, 2016
It's a good quiz and I enjoyed it thanks but just two women? And just two twentieth century authors from outside the US? Or did i miss someone?
+3
Level 63
Mar 15, 2017
Depends on how you count Plath & Nabokov (country) and Conrad (date). I count Plath, Orwell, Conrad, and Golding.
+6
Level 81
May 12, 2019
It's not the quiz maker's fault fewer women than men become noteworthy authors or that some countries have produced less noteworthy literature in the 20th century than they have in all the preceding centuries combined, is it? (nor are either of these facts really at all surprising or in dispute)
+3
Level 64
Jun 9, 2021
That's assuming that there's an objective definition of "noteworthy" that's not just a result of centuries-long cultural biases. Honestly having Golding and Flaubert lumped in with the rest of these good writers irritates me, and there are plenty of female writers whose work is being re-examined and elevated. George Eliot's story alone shows that being a woman made your book less popular with critics before any actual objective assessment of quality.
+1
Level 71
Jun 18, 2021
If no one makes an effort to give more visibility to women (to try and make up for the centuries of ignoring them), then how can they become noteworthy? One has first to be noted before they can be deemed worthy.
+4
Level 57
Oct 24, 2020
Indeed, although I'm sure it's almost impossible to avoid some kind of bias in this kind of quiz. I'd not heard of "on the road", "gravity's rainbow" or "slaughterhouse five" despite having a literature degree.

I would say that to have none of Jane Austen, George Eliot, George Sand, Charlotte Bronte, Agatha Christie or - dare I say it - Beatrix Potter or J. K. Rowling (just for example) is a curious omission though. And when you consider that the three best-selling novelists of all time are women - which is surely "noteworthy" if anything is - it's very curious. But it's not my quiz.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_fiction_authors

Turns out Jane Austen is in quiz no. 2, along with the also obvious Virginia Woolf. Bonzer.

+1
Level 67
Jun 9, 2021
This misses the point though. Danielle Steel and Barbara Cartland are garbage. Comparing them with the names on this list is like comparing Nsync to Beethoven.
+1
Level 71
Jun 18, 2021
The quiz title is "Who Wrote This Book", not "Who Wrote This Masterpiece".
+2
Level 76
Jul 13, 2017
Technically Homer didn't write the Iliad, it was an example of oral tradition.
+2
Level 91
Feb 18, 2022
This is an assumption of modern scholars based on the study of oral traditions still surviving in the present day, and is no more reliable than the assumption that everything ancient history recorded about the life of Homer is accurate
+2
Level 63
Jul 13, 2017
Strictly speaking Hamlet is a play, not a book, but that's pretty nitpicky :)
+2
Level 67
Jun 9, 2021
A book is anything put down on paper and between covers. Most of the books on this list are novels, but Hamlet is a book.
+7
Level 36
Jul 13, 2017
Hugely US-centric quiz, this looks like an American high school reading list.
+7
Level 81
May 12, 2019
While it's true that many of these books might be read by US high schoolers, are you actually kidding or are you really this obnoxiously petulant? Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Nabokov, Flaubert, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Homer, Hugo, Dickens, Cervantes... and you can still complain about this being Amerocentric? You must save a lot of money on colonoscopies.
+3
Level 67
Jun 10, 2021
Nabokov actually became an American citizen and most of his best-known works--most notably Lolita--were originally written in English. This doesn't affect your point, which is still valid, but I just think it's an interesting point that most people don't know because we're so used to hearing about the Russian literary masters that it's weird to think that one of them wrote in English.
+1
Level 78
Jun 9, 2021
It is true that a greater diversity of English-language authors is present on this site while only a handful of non-English language authors are mentioned again and again (which makes sense given the site's demographics). But all the authors on this quiz are respected internationally. When I read the literary sections of my (non-Anglo) newspaper there's a good chance I'll encounter any of them sooner rather than later.
+1
Level 83
Oct 23, 2023
Probably because there are lots of translators working from English into other languages, but because of the state of modern languages education in the UK and USA, there are very few working into English, especially in literature. The popularity of Russian literature in English, for example, is pretty much down to a single woman (Constance Garnett).
+7
Level 77
Jul 13, 2017
Who wasn't tempted to put 'Kate Bush' for Wuthering Heights?
+2
Level 67
Jul 13, 2017
Well I've read 13 of them and I managed to get 19. 'Gravity's Rainbow' and 'Slaughterhouse 5' are among only a handful of books I've bothered to read more than once
+2
Level 71
Jul 13, 2017
Maybe add a little more leeway on the spelling for Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky? Knew them both but in French, we write them Tolstoi and Dostoievksi... Good quiz nevertheless!
+3
Level 47
Jul 13, 2017
This will probably sound incredibly nitpicky, but would you be willing to accept Eric Blair for George Orwell? I had a massive brainfart while taking this and had a hell of a time remembering his pen name, but for some reason, I was able to remember his real name from history class.
+1
Level 85
Jun 9, 2021
My brainfart was easily remembering Holden Caulfield, but drawing a total blank on the author who created him!
+3
Level 41
Jul 14, 2017
I think Eric Blair should be accepted for George Orwell since Orwell was his pen name. Also, no Twain?
+2
Level 70
Oct 25, 2021
'CaptainHumanLogic' wins the 'Gold Nitpick Award' for July 2017...... congratulations.
+3
Level 72
Jul 14, 2017
This may seem pedantic, but could you add the diaeresis on the e of the final answer? This is one of the only examples known in English language where it's required because if you omit it, the letter would not be pronounced because of the rules of the language.
+5
Level 56
Jul 19, 2017
You're right, that does seem pedantic.
+3
Level 72
Jun 29, 2019
Not really (at all). There is no point in showing answers incorrect. It would only make people learn the wrong thing.

Leeway on what is accepted, sure. But noone gains from the answers being displayed as something else.

+1
Level 78
Jun 9, 2021
Okay Prinz Erik.
+2
Level 53
Jun 7, 2018
Somehow missed my favourite novel and author :( Sorry Dostoevsky
+1
Level 28
Feb 16, 2021
3:53

Scoring

You scored 4/24 = 17%

This beats or equals 12.1% of test takers

The average score is 13

Your high score is 4

+1
Level 78
Jun 9, 2021
congrats
+1
Level 28
Jun 9, 2021
Oh, that special pain you feel when you can yell out the answer, but don't know how to spell the answer!
+1
Level 56
Aug 25, 2023
Great quiz! However, I think there might be a slight spelling error as Dostoyevsky should be spelt Dostoevsky?

Sorry if that comes across as nitpicking.

+1
Level 49
May 9, 2024
Madame Bovary and Anna Karenina…Wish I could read them for the first time again.