Q 01/05

Who wrote the poem 'She Walks in Beauty'?

A) Percy Shelley

B) Samuel Coleridge

C) Lord Byron

D) William Blake

Answer · why

C) Lord Byron

Lord Byron wrote it in 1814 after seeing his cousin's wife at a London party, dressed in mourning with spangles on her gown.

Q 02/05

Shelley's second wife, Mary, wrote which novel?

A) Dracula

B) The Castle of Otranto

C) The Monk

D) Frankenstein

Answer · why

D) Frankenstein

Frankenstein began in 1816 as her answer to Lord Byron's challenge that each of his guests write a ghost story; she was 18 at the time.

Q 03/05

Which bird does the Ancient Mariner shoot?

A) Albatross

B) Seagull

C) Pelican

D) Raven

Answer · why

A) Albatross

Albatross: the crew hang the dead bird round the Mariner's neck, which gave English the phrase 'an albatross around one's neck' for a burden of guilt.

Q 04/05

Who wrote 'Ode to the West Wind' and 'To a Skylark'?

A) Lord Byron

B) Percy Shelley

C) John Keats

D) William Blake

Answer · why

B) Percy Shelley

Percy Shelley wrote the West Wind ode in Florence in autumn 1819, using the storm-bringing wind as an image of the political change he hoped was comin...

Q 05/05

Who wrote 'Ode to a Nightingale' and 'Ode on a Grecian Urn'?

A) John Keats

B) Percy Shelley

C) William Wordsworth

D) Lord Byron

Answer · why

A) John Keats

John Keats, his housemate Charles Brown recalled, wrote the nightingale ode in a single spring morning, sitting under a plum tree in their Hampstead g...