The Ultimate English Literature Quiz!

We bet you can’t get all the answers to these challenging questions on English literature. They’ll take you through history on a journey from Middle English to William Shakespeare to people writing in the twenty-first century. See how many you can answer!

English Literature

English literature, specifically British literature, includes more than just William Shakespeare and Jane Austen. This quiz on literature will test your knowledge of literary greats throughout history. You'll have to dig deep into English classes of yore to answer quiz questions about classic works from the Middle Ages to today.

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Question 1/10

Everybody knows ol’ William Shakespeare, but only those with true English-literature knowledge know the other Renaissance playwrights—like this guy who wrote Doctor Faustus:

Thomas Kyd
Christopher Marlowe
William Congreve
John Dryden

Question 2/10

This poet’s most famous work is about a misbehaving couple, but the writer also wrote Areopagitica, a polemic against censorship.

John Milton
Andrew Marvell
William Blake
Carol Duffy

Question 3/10

Today, many English classes cover the poem “My Last Duchess” by the male half of this nineteenth-century literary power couple. But, while they were alive, it was the woman who received all the acclaim, particularly for Sonnets from the Portuguese. Not common in the history of literature!

Percy and Mary Shelley
George Henry Lewes and George Eliot
Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath

Question 4/10

Don’t you love it when writers honor other writers? Michael Cunningham’s The Hours intertwines three stories: one about this author and two inspired by one of their most famous novels. We’ll give you a hint: the main character of one of the stories is named Clarissa.

Jean Rhys
E.M. Forster
Anne Bronte
Virginia Woolf

Question 5/10

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” This famous first sentence opens which Dickens novel?

Oliver Twist
A Tale of Two Cities
Great Expectations
A Christmas Carol

Question 6/10

Name the British playwright who wrote The Homecoming, Betrayal, The Birthday Party, and The Room.

Caryl Churchill
Peter Shaffer
Bola Agbaje
Harold Pinter

Question 7/10

In 1999, poet Seamus Heaney published a new version of this classic.

Beowulf
The Iliad
Dream of the Rood
Paradise Lost

Question 8/10

Countless English students have been forced to memorize the following words, the beginning to which classic work of literature?
"Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote"

Pilgrim’s Progress
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
The Canterbury Tales
Le Morte d’Arthur

Question 9/10

The history of women writers was long neglected, but these days we’ve rediscovered forgotten artists—like this Restoration author who wrote Oroonoko and was one of the first women known to make her living with her pen.

Margaret Cavendish
Aphra Behn
Margery Kempe
Ann Radcliffe

Question 10/10

Sometimes those related by blood also share talent. That’s certainly the case for the Brontë sisters. You may know your Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre, but can you identify the novel written by Anne, the least famous sister?

The Mill on the Floss
Mary Barton
Shirley
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

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The Ultimate English Literature Quiz!