Arts and Literature Trivia  Famous Sculpture - Science Fiction - Comic Strips - Novelists

 

 

Arts and Literature trivia questions and answers with Comic Strips, famous writers, science fiction writers, and book authors.

What was the first career-girl comic strip?
A: Winnie Winkle, by Martin Branner, which made its debut in 1920.

What English literary classic was inspired by the adventures of Scottish pirate Andrew Selkirk?
A: Robinson Crusoe. Daniel Defoe wrote the tale after hearing the story of Selkirk's four and a half years on uninhabited Juan Fernandez Island off the coast of Chile.

What is the only sculpture on which Michelangelo is believed to have carved his name?
A: The Pieta. He reportedly did it after overhearing someone mistakenly attribute it to sculptor Christoforo Solari.

Did science fiction writer Jules Verne--who told of trips around the world and to the moon--ever fly?
A: Yes, once. He made a balloon ascension in 1873.

What was the first book to vanish from the Association of American Publishers' display at the Moscow Book Fair in September 1985?
A: Jane Fonda's Workout Book. The second was the Sears, Roebuck and Company catalog.

In the Nero Wolfe mysteries, what did Archie keep in his closet?
A: A bottle of rye, for the times when he was particularly frustrated with Nero Wolfe.

What was the name of Smilin' Jack's buddy in the comic strip about the dashing aviator?
A: Downwind.

Whose autobiography was entitled, R.S.V.P.
A: Professional party-giver Elsa Maxwell's.

What great writer, shortly before his death at age 90, successfully defended himself against senility charges by reading his latest work in court?
A: Sophocles. The work was Oedipus at Colonus.

What French writer used Alcofribas Nasier--an anagram of his real name--as a pseudonym?
A: Francois Rabelais. He used the pseudonym for his satirical works.

What was Dr. Frankenstein's first name in the Mary Shelley horror classic?
A: Victor.

How many kinds of kisses are descried in the Kama Sutra, the  classical Indian text on eroticism?
A: 20

Who attended the Mad Hatter's tea party in Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland?
A: The Mad Hatter, the March Hare, the Dormouse and Alice.

What name did artist Domenikos TheotokUpoulos sign on his paintings?
A: El Creco, which means "the Greek".

What twentieth-century English writer used the words hook, line and sinker in the titles of a three-book espionage series?
A: Len Deighton. The books were Spy Hook, Spy Line and Spy Sinker.

What American novelists great-grandfather wrote a book in response to Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin?
A: William Faulkner's great-grandfather William Clark Falkner (the family's original name). The book was entitled The Little Brick Church. The older Falkner also wrote a romantic novel, The White rose of Memphis, and a book about his travels, Rapid Ramblings in Europe.

What was the first painting by an American obtained by the world-famous Louvre Museum in Paris?
A: James Abbott McNiell Whistlers portrait of his elderly mother, formally known as Arrangement in Grey and Black, No.: The Artist's Mother, and popularly known as Whistler's Mother.

What famous writer was the as-told-to author of The Autobiography of Malcom X?
A: Alex Haley, best known for his 1976 epic Roots.