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Exploring Literary Illustrations and Their Contexts

This quiz explores various illustrations and contexts related to significant literary works and authors. Engage with visual narratives that enhance our understanding of literary history from the 15th century to the modern era.

#Literature #Illustrations #Literary History #Authors #Books

1 What does the following picture show?  Illustration for Jules Verne's Vingt mille lieues sous les mers (1870)   Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Vladivostok, 1995   Intimate short stories: The Court and City Vagaries (1711).   Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852)

2 What does the following picture show?  Elfriede Jelinek, Munich, 2004   Joyce Carol Oates, 2006   The short "novel" supplanted the longer "romance" in the 1680s. It found a second peak on title pages in 1720s when it received its body of classics. The labeling of fictions became only more interesting at the end of the century.[78]   Charles Dickens offering a public reading of his works, a symbol of the new literary life. Harper's Weekly, December 7, 1867.

3 What does the following picture show?  Berlin, May 10, 1933, Nazi book burning.   Urban commuter reading a novel, Berlin 2009.   Charles Dickens on the cover of L'Eclipse June 14, 1868 on his way across the English Channel   Illustration of a Dutch edition of Juliette, ca. 1800.

4 What does the following picture show?  Total numbers of English titles, 1600–1799 according to ESTC data. Years of political turmoil produced higher numbers of controversial short tracts.[54]   Dan Brown on the book jacket of one of his novels   Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's Wilhelm Meister (1795)   Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace (1868/69)

5 What does the following picture show?  Paul Auster, Salman Rushdie and Shimon Peres, New York City, 2008   Madeleine de Scudéry, Artamene (1654)   Model of 20th-century literary communication. A complex interaction is organised by public and academic literary criticism as the central provider of discussions, education and media attention.   Pulp magazines in a German newspaper shop, 2009

6 What does the following picture show?  Beginnings of a secret market of pornography, illustration to vol. 1, p.50 of the 1766 Fanny Hill edition.   Classics of the novel from the 16th century onwards: title page of A Select Collection of Novels (1720–22).   Deteriorated design: early 18th-century chapbook edition of The Honour of Chivalry, first published in 1598.   The Pilgrims diverting each other with tales; woodcut from Caxton's 1486 edition of Canterbury Tales.

7 What does the following picture show?  London's book market 1700, distribution of titles according to Term Catalogue data. The poetical and fictional production does not have a unified place yet.   François Rabelais Gargantua (1537).   Model of 20th-century literary communication. A complex interaction is organised by public and academic literary criticism as the central provider of discussions, education and media attention.   Bestsellers to be bought in a German supermarket, 2009

8 What does the following picture show?  Michel Houellebecq, Warsaw, 2008   Chaucer reciting Troilus and Criseyde: early 15th-century manuscript of the work at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge   Bestsellers to be bought in a German supermarket, 2009   Laurence Sterne, Tristram Shandy, vol.6, p.70-71 (1769)

9 What does the following picture show?  Persian Samizdat edition of Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses late 1990s?   Miguel de Cervantes, Novelas Exemplares (1613)   Oscar Wilde on trial in 1895.   Paper as the essential carrier: Murasaki Shikibu writing her The Tale of Genji in the early 11th century, 17th-century depiction

10 What does the following picture show?  Charles Dickens offering a public reading of his works, a symbol of the new literary life. Harper's Weekly, December 7, 1867.   1719 newspaper reprint of Robinson Crusoe   Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace (1868/69)   Paul Auster, Salman Rushdie and Shimon Peres, New York City, 2008

💡 Interesting Facts

  • American Civil War-era novelist John William DeForest coined the phrase the Great American Novel in an 1869 essay.
  • Arishima Ikuma, Japanese novelist, published his new-style poems and short stories as a vehicle to introduce the works of the French impressionist painter Paul Cézanne to the Japanese public.
  • Joan Bright Astley is believed to be one of the women on whom novelist Ian Fleming based the James Bond series character Miss Moneypenny.
  • most of the information available about English novelist Phebe Gibbes is derived from an application to the Royal Literary Fund for financial support in 1804.
  • American novelist Harold MacGrath had 18 of his 40 novels and 3 of his fictional short stories made into motion pictures.
  • Anglo-German novelist Elizabeth von Arnim was a cousin to New Zealand short story writer Katherine Mansfield.
  • French novelist and playwright Honoré de Balzac once lived in the house on the Moika River Embankment which now hosts the Consulate-General of France in Saint Petersburg.
  • Malian playwright and novelist Massa Makan Diabaté was the descendant of a long line of Malinké griots.
  • novelist Lucy Jane Bledsoe, a Stonewall Book Award winner and four-time Lambda Literary Award finalist, primarily writes LGBT literature.
  • Polish poet and political activist Apollo Korzeniowski was the father of novelist Joseph Conrad.
  • 49 of Egyptian novelist Ihsan Abdel Quddous's novels have had film adaptations.
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