The Arts Trivia Questions With Answers

Free trivia questions with answers.

The Arts Trivia.

Tattered Tom and Ragged Dick were the heroes and titles of books written by what nineteenth century American author?
A: Horatio Alger, who wrote more than 100 rags-to-riches success stories about hardworking and honest young men.

What writer-friend nicknamed T. S. Eliot "Old Possum"?
A: Ezra Pound.

What American writer, while a war correspondent, is credited with capturing a town single-handedly during the Spanish-American War?
A: Stephen Crane. The town was Juana Diaz in Puerto Rico; the resistance was nonexistent.

What cartoon character said, "The trouble with the rat race is there is never a finish line"?
A: Dagwood in the Blondie strip.

What are the names of Popeye's four nephews?
A: Pipeye, Peepeye, Pupeye , and Poopeye.

What visual impairment do some experts believe influenced the styles of artists El Greco and Modigliani?
A: Astigmatism.

All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren is a roman a clef about what American political figure?
A: Louisiana governor and senator Huey Long.

What famous writer had several butterflies named after him?
A: Lolita author Vladamir Nabokov, who was also a lepidopterist.

In the novel Futility, published in 1898--fourteen years before the sinking of the Titanic--an "unsinkable" luxury liner was lost after hitting an iceberg on its maiden voyage. What was the ship's name?
A: The Titan. It was the creation of writer Morgan Robertson.

What was the house in the background of Grant Wood's classic painting American Gothic?
A: A brothel in Eldon, Iowa.

Who wrote:
         "There was a little girl
          Who had a little curl
           Right in the middle of her forehead"?
A: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in his 1883 poem There Was A Little Girl.

What was the name of Frances Hodgson Burnett's character Little Lord Fauntleroy?
A: Cedric Errol.

What was the first daily comic strip published in the U.S.?
A: Mr. Mutt by H. C. (Bud) Fisher, later called Mutt and Jeff. The strip first appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle in 1907.

What fellow artist did French impressionist Paul Gauguin refer to as "the little green chemist"?
A: Pointillist Georges Seurat.

Sherlock Holmes' sidekick, Dr. Watson, suffered a war-time bullet wound. Where was it?
A: On his shoulder, according to A Study in Scarlet; in the leg, according to The Sign of Four.

What book was once banned by the Eldon, Missouri library because it contained 39 "objectionable" words?
A: The American Heritage Dictionary.

What nineteenth-century American literary classic was labeled "downright socialistic" and banned from U.S. Information Service libraries in 1954?
A: Walden, by Henry David Thoreau.

Who wrote:
         "twinkle Twinkle little bat!
         How I wonder what you're at!
         Up above the world you fly!
         Like a tea tray in the sky!"?
A: Lewis Carroll, in Alice in Wonderland. It was sung by the Mad Hatter.

What great American writer ran rum because he couldn't sell his work?
A: William Faulkner, creator of Yoknapatawpha County and two-time Pulitzer Prize winner for fiction (A Fable and The Reivers).

Who was Little Lulu's boy companion in the comic strip created by Marjorie Henderson?
A: Tubby.

What major British literary figure served two years at hard labor after being found guilty of homosexuality?
A: Oscar Wilde, who wrote De Profundis during his imprisonment.

Free Trivia Questions and Answers - The Arts