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American Literature Quiz


Quiz Questions on American Literature


  1. Which autobiographical children's novel by Laura Ingalls Wilder was published in September 1935?
  2. Which poet did Ezra Pound call "America's poet ... He is America."?
  3. Samuel Langhorne Clemens is better known by what pen name?
  4. What is the name of the whaling ship in the classic novel 'Moby-Dick' by writer Herman Melville?
  5. America's involvement in World War II influenced which 1948 novel by Norman Mailer?




  6. Which American novel published in 1852, was the best-selling novel of the 19th century?
  7. Which American author won the 1962 Nobel Prize in Literature "for his realistic and imaginative writings, combining as they do sympathetic humour and keen social perception."?
  8. Ernest Hemmingway's experiences doing what job in World War I formed the basis for his novel 'A Farewell to Arms'?
  9. Which novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald do some label the "Great American Novel"?
  10. Which American poet is regarded as one of the most important figures in American poetry yet her only publications during her lifetime were 10 of her nearly 1,800 poems, and one letter?
  11. Also known as 'The Children's Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death', which 1969 science fiction novel is the best known work of Kurt Vonnegut Jr?
  12. Which novel set during World War II examines the absurdity of war and military life mainly through the experiences of Captain John Yossarian?
  13. Willy Loman is the main character in which play?
  14. Who won the Nobel Prize in 1949 and is known for his great works such as 'Absalom, Absalom!' and 'The Sound and the Fury'?
  15. Which American novelist who wrote The Witches of Eastwick is one of only four writers to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction more than once?
  16. What sort of letter is a work of historical fiction published in 1850 by American author Nathaniel Hawthorne?
  17. Jerome David Salinger is best known for which 1951 novel?
  18. 'The Pathfinder', published in 1840, is the sequel to which historical novel written by James Fenimore Cooper in 1826?
  19. Which American author achieved international recognition with novels like 'The Portrait of a Lady' published in 1881?
  20. After years of obscurity, who became famous with the success of 'The Glass Menagerie' in 1944?


Answers:

  1. Little House on the Prairie
  2. Walt Whitman
  3. Mark Twain
  4. Pequod
  5. The Naked and the Dead
  6. Uncle Tom's Cabin (by author Harriet Beecher Stowe)
  7. John Steinbeck Jr
  8. Ambulance driver
  9. The Great Gatsby
  10. Emily Dickinson
  11. Slaughterhouse-Five
  12. Catch-22 (by Joseph Heller)
  13. Death of a Salesman (by Arthur Miller)
  14. William Faulkner



  15. John Updike
  16. The Scarlet Letter
  17. The Catcher in the Rye
  18. The Last of the Mohicans (The Last of the Mohicans: A Narrative of 1757)
  19. Henry James
  20. Tennessee Williams