How well do you know your Austen from your Orwell? Whether you’re a lifelong bookworm or just brushing up for a pub quiz, these 100 literature quiz questions are designed to test your knowledge across classic novels, famous authors, literary terms, and modern fiction.
We’ve broken the quiz into 10 rounds of 10 questions — perfect for classroom use, trivia nights, or anyone who wants to challenge themselves with the best literature quiz questions around. Pens ready? Let’s begin.
📚 Round 1: Famous Authors & Their Works
1. Who wrote Pride and Prejudice?
2. Who is the author of 1984 and Animal Farm?
3. Who created the detective Sherlock Holmes?
4. Who wrote the Harry Potter series?
5. Which author is best known for The Old Man and the Sea?
6. Who wrote The Great Gatsby?
7. Who is the author of The Catcher in the Rye?
8. Who wrote To Kill a Mockingbird?
9. Who penned the Lord of the Rings trilogy?
10. Who wrote Frankenstein?
📚 Round 2: Classic Literature & Novels
11. What is the name of the whale in Moby-Dick?
12. Who is the author of Crime and Punishment?
13. What novel begins with the line, “Call me Ishmael”?
14. Who wrote Jane Eyre?
15. What is the title of George Eliot’s most famous novel?
16. In which novel would you find the character Atticus Finch?
17. What 19th-century novel features the character Pip?
18. Who wrote Wuthering Heights?
19. What dystopian novel features the character Winston Smith?
20. What is the name of the girl who falls down a rabbit hole in Lewis Carroll’s novel?
📚 Round 3: Plays & Drama
21. Who wrote Hamlet?
22. What is the name of the tragic king in Shakespeare’s play about madness and power?
23. Who wrote A Streetcar Named Desire?
24. In which play would you find the character Willy Loman?
25. Who wrote the Greek tragedy Oedipus Rex?
26. Which Shakespearean play features the line, “All the world’s a stage”?
27. Who wrote the absurdist play Waiting for Godot?
28. What is the title of Arthur Miller’s play about the Salem witch trials?
29. Who is the main female character in Romeo and Juliet?
30. Who is the author of Pygmalion?
📚 Round 4: Poetry & Poets
31. Who wrote The Raven?
32. What English poet wrote Paradise Lost?
33. Who wrote the line, “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day”?
34. What poet is best known for The Waste Land?
35. Who wrote Because I could not stop for Death?
36. Which war poet wrote Dulce et Decorum Est?
37. Who is the Romantic poet known for Ode to a Nightingale?
38. Who wrote The Road Not Taken?
39. What Scottish poet wrote Auld Lang Syne?
40. Who wrote Howl, a key work of the Beat Generation?
📚 Round 5: Children’s & Young Adult Literature
41. Who wrote The Chronicles of Narnia series?
42. What is the name of the hobbit in The Hobbit?
43. Who is the author of Charlotte’s Web?
44. Who wrote Matilda and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory?
45. What novel begins with four sisters: Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy?
46. Who wrote the His Dark Materials trilogy?
47. What Dr. Seuss book features a persistent character trying to offer green eggs and ham?
48. Who wrote the Percy Jackson & the Olympians series?
49. What is the title of the first book in the Hunger Games series?
50. What novel by Lois Lowry features a society without emotion or memory?
📚 Round 6: Literary Characters
51. Who is the main character in The Picture of Dorian Gray?
52. What is the name of the miser in A Christmas Carol?
53. Who is the narrator of The Great Gatsby?
54. What character is obsessed with a white whale?
55. Who is the young wizard in The Sword in the Stone?
56. What detective is featured in The Maltese Falcon?
57. Who is the love interest of Elizabeth Bennet?
58. What is the name of the boy raised by wolves in The Jungle Book?
59. Who is the female lead in Gone with the Wind?
60. What is the name of the vampire in Dracula?
📚 Round 7: Literary Awards & Milestones
61. Who was the first African American to win the Nobel Prize in Literature?
62. What is the name of the annual award for the best novel written in English and published in the UK or Ireland?
63. What American author declined the Pulitzer Prize for A Fable?
64. Who was the first woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature?
65. What novel won the first Pulitzer Prize for Fiction?
66. What French writer won the 1964 Nobel Prize but refused it?
67. Who was the youngest person ever to win the Nobel Prize in Literature?
68. What prestigious U.S. prize honors excellence in newspaper, magazine, and online journalism as well as literature and musical composition?
69. Which poet won the Nobel Prize in 2016, sparking debate over whether song lyrics count as literature?
70. Who won the Booker Prize in 2023?
📚 Round 8: Literary Genres & Terms
71. What is a Bildungsroman?
72. What genre includes dragons, magic, and imaginary worlds?
73. What is the term for a story within a story?
74. What literary term describes giving human qualities to non-human things?
75. What’s the term for a play on words?
76. What’s the opposite of a protagonist?
77. What type of novel uses letters or diary entries as its format?
78. What is a tragic flaw in a character called?
79. What term refers to an implied or indirect reference in literature?
80. What is a short, symbolic story with a moral lesson called?
📝 Outro
That’s the end of this 80-question literary challenge. Whether you breezed through the classics or discovered a few new names along the way, we hope these literature quiz questions sparked your curiosity.
If you enjoyed this quiz, be sure to check out our other themed quizzes covering history, science, pop culture, and more. And if you’re running a quiz night or classroom session, feel free to use and share this set — that’s what it’s here for.
Looking for even more literature quiz questions? Stay tuned — we’re always adding fresh rounds.
Great fun – but I don’t agree with printing the answers…..how else are you going to learn?I
Thank God the answers are provided. I am 94 years old, and anomia is having its way. Names I once knew as well as my own were lost to me. Thank you so much for this test. I found it very helpful.