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The British Novel — Defoe to the Present — GK Questions with Answers

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28 questions
  1. The Rise of the Novel (1957) was written by —
    1. F. R. Leavis
    2. Ian Watt
    3. Percy Lubbock
    4. Wayne Booth
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    Answer: (B) Ian Watt

    Ian Watt, who explained the novel by formal realism and the rise of the middle class.

  2. The first English novel is commonly said to be —
    1. Pamela
    2. Robinson Crusoe
    3. Tom Jones
    4. Oroonoko
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    Answer: (B) Robinson Crusoe

    Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (1719), though the claim is disputed.

  3. Pamela is written in the form of —
    1. a diary
    2. letters
    3. a memoir
    4. dialogue
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    Answer: (B) letters

    It is the first great epistolary novel in English.

  4. Fielding described Joseph Andrews as —
    1. a romance
    2. a comic epic poem in prose
    3. a history
    4. a satire
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    Answer: (B) a comic epic poem in prose

    The phrase is from his preface.

  5. Which novel is famous for its black page, blank page and marbled page?
    1. Tom Jones
    2. Tristram Shandy
    3. Humphry Clinker
    4. The Vicar of Wakefield
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    Answer: (B) Tristram Shandy

    Sterne’s Tristram Shandy — the first great experimental novel.

  6. The first Gothic novel is —
    1. The Monk
    2. The Castle of Otranto
    3. The Mysteries of Udolpho
    4. Frankenstein
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    Answer: (B) The Castle of Otranto

    Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto (1764).

  7. The original title of Pride and Prejudice was —
    1. Elinor and Marianne
    2. First Impressions
    3. The Bennets
    4. Longbourn
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    Answer: (B) First Impressions

    Austen first called it First Impressions.

  8. In Frankenstein, the name Frankenstein belongs to —
    1. the monster
    2. the scientist
    3. the ship’s captain
    4. the bride
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    Answer: (B) the scientist

    Victor Frankenstein is the maker; the creature is never named.

  9. Vanity Fair is subtitled —
    1. "A Study of Provincial Life"
    2. "A Novel without a Hero"
    3. "A Tale of the Napoleonic Wars"
    4. "A Satire on Society"
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    Answer: (B) "A Novel without a Hero"

    Thackeray’s own subtitle.

  10. Wuthering Heights is narrated by —
    1. Heathcliff
    2. Catherine
    3. Lockwood and Nelly Dean
    4. an omniscient narrator
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    Answer: (C) Lockwood and Nelly Dean

    A double frame — Lockwood records what Nelly Dean tells him.

  1. George Eliot’s real name was —
    1. Mary Ann Evans
    2. Elizabeth Gaskell
    3. Charlotte Brontë
    4. Harriet Martineau
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    Answer: (A) Mary Ann Evans

    Mary Ann Evans, who used a male pen-name to be taken seriously.

  2. Middlemarch is subtitled —
    1. "A Novel without a Hero"
    2. "A Study of Provincial Life"
    3. "A Tale of Two Cities"
    4. "A Pure Woman"
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) "A Study of Provincial Life"

    Its subtitle announces its subject.

  3. Hardy gave up writing novels after the reception of —
    1. Tess of the d’Urbervilles
    2. Jude the Obscure
    3. The Mayor of Casterbridge
    4. The Return of the Native
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    Answer: (B) Jude the Obscure

    Jude the Obscure (1895) was so savaged that he turned to poetry.

  4. T. S. Eliot called which novel the first and greatest English detective novel?
    1. The Woman in White
    2. The Moonstone
    3. Bleak House
    4. A Study in Scarlet
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) The Moonstone

    Wilkie Collins’s The Moonstone (1868).

  5. "The horror! The horror!" is said by —
    1. Marlow
    2. Kurtz
    3. Jim
    4. Nostromo
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    Answer: (B) Kurtz

    Kurtz, at the end of Heart of Darkness.

  6. "Only connect" is the epigraph to —
    1. A Passage to India
    2. Howards End
    3. A Room with a View
    4. Maurice
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    Answer: (B) Howards End

    E. M. Forster’s Howards End.

  7. The three parts of A Passage to India are —
    1. Mosque, Caves, Temple
    2. Chandrapore, Marabar, Mau
    3. Morning, Noon, Night
    4. East, West, Between
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    Answer: (A) Mosque, Caves, Temple

    Mosque · Caves · Temple.

  8. Ulysses takes place on —
    1. 16 June 1904
    2. 16 June 1922
    3. 4 July 1904
    4. 1 January 1904
    Show answer

    Answer: (A) 16 June 1904

    16 June 1904, celebrated as Bloomsday.

  9. The phrase "stream of consciousness" was coined by —
    1. Henry James
    2. William James
    3. May Sinclair
    4. Dorothy Richardson
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    Answer: (B) William James

    William James in 1890; May Sinclair first applied it to fiction in 1918.

  10. In "Modern Fiction" Woolf attacks Bennett, Wells and Galsworthy as —
    1. Edwardians
    2. materialists
    3. realists
    4. Georgians
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    Answer: (B) materialists

    She calls them materialists for describing the outside of life only.

  1. George Orwell’s real name was —
    1. Eric Arthur Blair
    2. Henry Williamson
    3. Cyril Connolly
    4. Arthur Koestler
    Show answer

    Answer: (A) Eric Arthur Blair

    Eric Arthur Blair.

  2. The title Brave New World comes from —
    1. Hamlet
    2. The Tempest
    3. Macbeth
    4. the Bible
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    Answer: (B) The Tempest

    Miranda’s line in The Tempest.

  3. The conch is a symbol in —
    1. Lord of the Flies
    2. A Clockwork Orange
    3. Brighton Rock
    4. The Spire
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    Answer: (A) Lord of the Flies

    Golding’s Lord of the Flies.

  4. The invented slang "Nadsat" appears in —
    1. Nineteen Eighty-Four
    2. A Clockwork Orange
    3. Brave New World
    4. The Golden Notebook
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) A Clockwork Orange

    Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange.

  5. Which novel won both the Booker Prize and the "Booker of Bookers"?
    1. The Remains of the Day
    2. Midnight’s Children
    3. The God of Small Things
    4. Wolf Hall
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) Midnight’s Children

    Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children.

  6. The first Indian woman to win the Booker Prize was —
    1. Kiran Desai
    2. Arundhati Roy
    3. Anita Desai
    4. Jhumpa Lahiri
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) Arundhati Roy

    Arundhati Roy, in 1997, for The God of Small Things.

  7. A novel about the growth and formation of an artist is called a —
    1. bildungsroman
    2. künstlerroman
    3. roman à clef
    4. picaresque
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) künstlerroman

    A künstlerroman — a bildungsroman specifically about an artist.

  8. Arrange chronologically: (i) Middlemarch (ii) Robinson Crusoe (iii) Ulysses (iv) Pride and Prejudice
    1. ii, iv, i, iii
    2. ii, i, iv, iii
    3. iv, ii, i, iii
    4. ii, iv, iii, i
    Show answer

    Answer: (A) ii, iv, i, iii

    1719 → 1813 → 1871 → 1922.

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