Q 01/05

Which author began Frankenstein at eighteen after a ghost-story challenge near Lake Geneva?

A) Jane Austen

B) Mary Shelley

C) Ann Radcliffe

D) Charlotte Brontë

Answer · why

B) Mary Shelley

Mary Shelley was 18 when she started the story, and its first edition came out anonymously in 1818, when she was 20. Her name went on the title page o...

Q 02/05

Which Russian novelist was led out to a firing squad, then reprieved at the last moment and sent to Siberia?

A) Leo Tolstoy

B) Ivan Turgenev

C) Fyodor Dostoevsky

D) Mikhail Lermontov

Answer · why

C) Fyodor Dostoevsky

Fyodor Dostoevsky was condemned for joining a circle that discussed banned books, and the death sentence was commuted at the last moment. Four years i...

Q 03/05

Which children's character died by hanging at the original ending of Carlo Collodi's 1881 serial?

A) Pinocchio

B) Heidi

C) Mowgli

D) Black Beauty

Answer · why

A) Pinocchio

Pinocchio dies hanged in Chapter 15, where the serial first stopped. Reader demand and the editor's request brought the puppet back for the chapters i...

Q 04/05

Which Hans Christian Andersen heroine dies at dawn after the prince she loves marries someone else?

A) The Little Mermaid

B) The Snow Queen

C) Thumbelina

D) The Little Match Girl

Answer · why

A) The Little Mermaid

The Little Mermaid dissolves into foam and becomes a spirit of the air instead of winning the prince. Andersen's working title for the tale was Daught...

Q 05/05

Which young Gascon, the hero of The Three Musketeers, is not actually one of the three of the title?

A) Athos

B) Porthos

C) Aramis

D) D'Artagnan

Answer · why

D) D'Artagnan

D'Artagnan leaves Gascony for Paris hoping to join the Musketeers of the Guard, and is befriended by the trio of Athos, Porthos and Aramis. He was loo...