Tuesday Trivia

1. After completing high school, which author spent over a dozen years on the assembly line of Flint’s historic Fisher Body Plant hanging car doors?
2. What 17th century female author had a personal library of books that numbered over 800 titles?
3. Which Victorian poet, the oldest of 12 children, was nicknamed “Ba” by her family?
4. Which author cites T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land as the source of a major awakening in regards to his own writing?
5. Which American author claimed to have been born in 1919 in order to appear younger than her husband?

In the Summer of 1816, how many people stayed with Lord Byron at the Villa Diodati in Geneva (when Mary Shelley began writing Frankenstein)? What were their names?


Byron and four others stayed at the Villa Diodati, making five total: Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mary Shelley, John William Polidori, and Claire Clairmont.



Tybalt, in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet is named after which anthropomorphic character?


Tybalt is named after Tybalt/Tibert, the Prince of Cats in the Reynard the Fox stories. Mercutio alludes to this connection between characters when he says that Tybalt is “More than Prince of Cats” in Act II, Scene iv.



True or False: Heath Ledger was named after Heathcliff in Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights.


True. Heath was named after Heathcliff, and his older sister, Kate, was named after Catherine Linton nee Earnshaw. Both are names of characters in Wuthering Heights.


Which author was twice engaged to Felice Bauer, a woman who lived in Berlin and worked as a representative for a dictaphone company?


Franz Kafka met Felice Bauer at Max Brod's home in 1912. Over the next five years they corresponded a great deal, met occasionally, and engaged twice before the relationship ended in 1917.


Which female author, disguised as a male Abyssinian royal, participated in the Dreadnought Hoax — a practical joke thought up by Horace de Vere Cole to trick the Royal Navy into showing the HMS Dreadnought to a supposed delegation of royals?


Several members of the Bloomsbury Group gained notoriety by participating in the Dreadnought hoax, including Virginia Woolf.