Trivia Tuesday

1. Dora Diamant, lover to one of the most important and influential fiction writers of the early 20th century, ignored his wishes to have all of his works burned, secretly keeping approximately 20 notebooks and 35 letters until they were confiscated by the Gestapo in 1933. Who was the writer?
2. Which well-known, contemporary clothing company appears in Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley in its original form — as an elite sporting goods store?
3. Which American author had a schizophrenic sister named Rose who was treated for her mental illness with a pre-frontal lobotomy?
4. Which gothic writer was better known during his lifetime as the personal assistant of actor Henry Irving and business manager of the Lyceum Theatre in London?
5. As a teenager, which author enjoyed reading Icelandic sagas and Norse mythology — which can be seen in the style of his later works?

Which book gets its title from a nursery rhyme that begins, "Vintery, mintery, cutery, corn, Apple seed and apple thorn…”?


Vintery, mintery, cutery, corn,
Apple seed and apple thorn,
Wire, briar, limber lock
Three geese in a flock
One flew East
One flew West
And one flew over the cuckoo's nest"




What is the title of Shakespeare’s lost play?

The play Cardenio that has been credited to the Bard and which was performed in his life, has been completely lost to time. Today we have no written record of its story whatsoever.




Which Greek writer was described by contemporaries as, “of loathsome aspect...potbellied, misshapen of head, snub-nosed, swarthy, dwarfish, bandy-legged, short-armed, squint-eyed, liver-lipped—a portentous monstrosity?"

Aesop



'Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all” is a coin phrased by which author?

Alfred Lord Tennyson



Which French author was shot in the leg and left with a permanent limp by his nephew, a young man who suffered from paranoia?


On 9 March 1886, as Jules Verne approached his own home, his twenty-five-year-old nephew Gaston, who suffered from paranoia, shot twice at him with a gun. One bullet missed, but the second entered Verne's left leg, giving him a permanent limp. Gaston spent the rest of his life in an asylum.