What do you know about literature ?

Here are the last lines of some well-known novels. Can you identify them ?

1) ‘ Tomorrow I’ll think of some way to get him back. After all, tomorrow is another day.’

2)  Lying on the floor was a dead man, in evening dress, with a knife in his heart. He was withered, wrinkled, and loathsome in visage. It was not until they had examined the rings that they recognized who it was.

3)  Come, children, let us shut up the box and the puppets, for our play is played out.

Titles taken from Shakespeare. Can you name the work from which each was borrowed ?

1) Moon Calf by Floyd Bell

2) Under the Greenwood Tree by Thomas Hardy.

3) Sad Cypress by Agatha Christie

4) This England by Mary Ellen Chase

Artists in Literature.

Not all the characters described here were artists, but at least they displayed an inclination towards brush or pencil. Can you name them and the authors who created them? 

1) After his daily caning by a sadistic schoolmaster, this roly-poly scholar would cheer himself up by drawing skeletons all over his slate.

2) This self-centred genius died of leprosy in Tahiti, with the walls of his room covered with his greatest works.

3) Death caused this girl to leave her masterpiece unfinished, so that the picture of a melancholy lady on a bridge had two arms folded across her breast, two stretched out in front and two reaching toward the moon.

Alice in Wonderland

Here are some unforgettable speeches by various characters in Alice in Wonderland and Alice through the Looking Glass. Can you name who says what?

1) Everyone has won and all must have prizes

2)  The rule is jam tomorrow and jam yesterday—but never jam today

3)  Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.

4) When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.

Some interrupted weddings.

Some fictional weddings weren’t the happy events they were supposed to be. Can you name the stories and the authors who invented them?

1) As a governess and her employer stood before the altar, a stranger interrupted the wedding service by asserting that the groom-to-be was already married and that his wife was still living.

2) At twenty minutes to none a bride-to-be received a note from her fiancé which cancelled the wedding, and she never afterwards looked upon the light of day.

3) The parson had just pronounced them man and wife, and, as the groom turned to kiss the bride, a shot rang out and she collapsed in his arms.

Money in Literature.

Money isn’t everything in life, but to the characters described below it meant a great deal. Can you name the individuals and the stories in which they featured ? 

1) This linen weaver was robbed one winter night of his life savings, £272 12s. 6d.

2) Through Indian magic he was granted three wishes: the first was for £200, which he received the next day from an insurance company as compensation for his son’s accidental death.

3) In order to inherit seven million dollars he had to spend one million within a year and have nothing to show for it.

Second lines of famous poems.

Can you identify each poem and its author ?

1) Bird thy never wert.

2) On they cold grey stones, O sea

3) Prithee, why so pale ?

4) The owl, for all his feathers, was a-cold.

The answers to the above quiz will be revealed in the next Jot. Here are the answers to the last literary quiz .

First lines

1) John Donne

2) ‘Christabel’ by S. T. Coleridge

3) ‘Dover Beach’ by Matthew Arnold

Well dressed characters

1) Scarlett O’Hara in Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell

2) Little Black Sambo by Helen Bannerman

3) Humpty Dumpty in Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll.

Famous words

1) Sherlock Homes in ‘The Adventure of the Norwood Builder’ by Arthur Conan  Doyle.

2) Uncle Tom in Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe

3) Dr Primrose in The Vicar of Wakefield by Oliver Goldsmith

Gentlemen of the Cloth

1) Rev Arthur Dimmesdale in The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

2) Mr Collins in Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

3) Bishop Hatto in ‘God’s Judgement on a wicked bishop’ by Robert Southey.

Favourite foods

1) Cherry pie and currant wine

2) Toasted cheese.

3) Luke-warm water

Twenty Questions.

1) Shelley

2) Thomas Gray

3) Francois Villon

Servants

1) Mrs Bardell in The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens

2) Pamela Andrews in Pamela by Samuel Richardson

3) ‘Gunga Din’ by Rudyard Kipling.

How many did you get ?  Congratulate yourself if you got Southey’s Bishop Hatto right.

To be continued…

R.M.Healey