Q 01/05

Which 1764 novel, passed off by Horace Walpole as a translated Italian manuscript, is called the first Gothic novel?

A) The Castle of Otranto

B) A Sicilian Romance

C) The Recess

D) The Old English Baron

Answer · why

A) The Castle of Otranto

The Castle of Otranto was published anonymously with a title page crediting an invented Italian canon and a fictitious English translator, William Mar...

Q 02/05

Which jilted Dickens character stopped every clock at Satis House and wore her wedding dress for decades?

A) Lady Dedlock

B) Mrs Clennam

C) Betsey Trotwood

D) Miss Havisham

Answer · why

D) Miss Havisham

Miss Havisham in Great Expectations stopped the clocks at twenty minutes to nine, the exact moment she received her fiance's jilting letter, and left ...

Q 03/05

Which 1938 Daphne du Maurier novel opens with the line 'Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again'?

A) The Scapegoat

B) My Cousin Rachel

C) Rebecca

D) Frenchman's Creek

Answer · why

C) Rebecca

Rebecca never names its narrator, a shy young woman who marries the widower Maxim de Winter and finds his Cornish estate still ruled by the memory of ...

Q 04/05

Anne Rice objected to which actor's casting as Lestat in the 1994 Interview with the Vampire film, then recanted?

A) Brad Pitt

B) Tom Cruise

C) Antonio Banderas

D) Christian Slater

Answer · why

B) Tom Cruise

Tom Cruise struck Rice as all wrong for Lestat, and she said so in the press; after a pre-release screening she phoned him to say she had been wrong. ...

Q 05/05

John Polidori, whose tale The Vampyre grew out of the wet summer of 1816, travelled with Lord Byron in what capacity?

A) Personal physician

B) Private secretary

C) Fencing master

D) Italian tutor

Answer · why

A) Personal physician

Polidori was Byron's personal physician, hired at 20 for the European tour that stalled at Lake Geneva. His suave vampire Lord Ruthven became the temp...