Literary Trivia: 40 Fun Facts About Your Favorite Books and Authors

Literature offers us a vast pool of knowledge and entertainment, but the literary world can also be quite weird and wonderful.

We never realize that there are stories also revolving around the stories we read, whether it’s the adventures our favorite authors undergo while writing them or the events these works encounter throughout their time in print.

I decided to see if I could find some of the small but cool details that involve various literary works. Some of these you might know, while some you might be shocked to find out about.

Did You Know?

I’ve assembled a list of anecdotes and little-known facts that involve some of the world’s most beloved authors and literary works. Check out the real stories behind some of your favorite stories. Challenge your literary knowledge or use them to entertain your friends and family on the next game night!

What is the title of the world’s first ever novel?

A. Le Morte d’Arthur

B. The Tales of Genji

C. Robinson Crusoe

2. Who is the first author to ever earn a billion dollars from their books?

A. Stephen King

B. J.R.R. Tolkien

C. J.K. Rowling

3. What is the slowest selling book of all time?

A. Oxford University Press’s translation of the New Testament

B. The Bible

C. The Art of War

4. What color of ink did poet Pablo Neruda exclusively write in?

A. Green

B. Blue

C. Black

5. What famous Sherlock Holme’s quote is actually a misquote?

A. “You see, but you do not observe.”

B. “The game is afoot.”

C. “Elementary, my dear Watson.”

6. What was the working title of Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind

A. Ba! Ba! Black Sheep

B. Tomorrow is Another Day

C. Tote the Weary Load

7. What Dr. Seuss book was written because of a bet between the author and his publisher?

A. The Cat in the Hat

B. Green Eggs and Ham

C. If I Ran the Zoo

8. What is the most expensive manuscript ever sold?

A. The Book of Mormon

B. Codex Leicester

C. Letters from Zhao Mengfu to his friend Guo Tianxi

9. Who is the British writer who found inspiration by climbing mulberry trees naked?

A. D.H. Lawrence

B. Charles Dickens

C. Virginia Woolf

10. Who was the first in history to refuse the Nobel Prize for Literature?

A. Toni Morrison

B. Boris Paternak

C. Czeslaw Milosz

11. What pet did Lord Byron have while attending Trinity College, in defiance of the college’s rules?

A. Dog

B. Bear

C. Parrot

12. Who is the author with a deep fear of thunder and lightning, believing them to be manifestations of God’s wrath?

A. James Joyce

B. William Shakespeare

C. Hans Christian Andersen

13. Who is the author who hated the Eiffel tower so much that they spent their lunch inside the tower to avoid looking at its profile while eating?

A. Honore de Balzac

B. Emile Zola

C. Guy de Maupassant

14. What is the name of the novel whose story eerily resembled the sinking of the Titanic?

A. The Wreck of the Titan

B. Tragedy of the Titan

C. How the World’s Largest Ship Went Down in the North Atlantic

15. Who is the writer who wrote all of his works and correspondence on one typewriter for more than 50 years?

A. Cormac McCarthy

B. William Golding

C. Wole Soyinka

16. Where did L. Frank Baum, author of The Wizard of Oz, take the name of Oz from?

A. A friend’s nickname

B. A filing cabinet in his office

C. A suggestion from his wife

17. What is the name of the hospital that James Barrie left the copyright of his work, Peter Pan, to?

A. Great Ormond Street Hospital for the Sick Children

B. The Royal London Hospital

C. London Bridge Hospital

18. What did Roald Dahl do as a child that helped inspire Charlie and the Chocolate Factory?

A. The mascot for a local sweets shop

B. Chocolate taste-tester

C. Sold candy at school

19. Who is the author who gave away his birthday to a little girl because her birthday fell on Christmas day?

A. Robert Louis Stevenson

B. Andrew Lang

C. William Blake

20. Who is the author that drunkenly brought home a urinal from their favorite bar?

A. Ernest Hemingway

B. George Orwell

C. F. Scott Fitzgerald

21. What sickness, named after a French author, apparently made people sick from exposure to art and items of great beauty?

A. Stendhal syndrome

B. Collins’ Syndrome

C. Coreopsis

22. Who enjoyed munching on apples and taking a relaxing bath while thinking up their stories?

A. Agatha Christie

B. Dorothy L. Sayers

C. P.D. James

23. Who is the author that only wrote while lying down in bed or on a couch?

A. Harper Lee

B. Harriet Beecher Stowe

C. Truman Capote

24. Which of her own characters did Agatha Christie call “a detestable, bombastic, tiresome, egocentric little creep”?

A. Parker Pyne

B. Miss Marple

C. Hercule Poirot

25. In 2005, a company named Hanson Robotics built a life-sized android of which science fiction author?

A. Isaac Asimov

B. Philip K. Dick

C. Jules Verne

26. Which Nobel prize laureate was born in a hotel room and died in a hotel room?

A. Eugene O’Neill

B. W.B. Yeats

C. Rudyard Kipling

27. Before becoming famous, which author tried to sell perfume extracted from the secretions that came out of a civet’s butt?

A. Daniel Defoe

B. George Bernard Shaw

C. Kazuo Ishiguro

28. What is the name of the Nancy Drew series’ nonexistent author?

A. Carolyn Channing

B. Carolyn Keene

C. Carolyn Swann

29. What birds did Edgar Allan Poe consider first before using the raven for one of his most famous poems?

A. Parrot and Owl

B. Heron and Dove

C. Cuckoo and Nightjar

30. Which famous character from A Thousand and One Nights is originally Chinese?

A. Ali Baba

B. Aladdin

C. Sinbad

31. Who is the author who first used the word “wicked” to mean good or cool?

A. F. Scott Fitzgerald

B. William Shakespeare

C. Lewis Caroll

32. The Monster in Frankenstein has no name, but what name did author Mary Shelly once call it?

A. Prometheus

B. Adam

C. Caliban

33. Though DC Comics popularized it, who first came up with the term “Gotham City”?

A. Washington Irving

B. Stan Lee

C. Jack Kirby

34. Who is the most portrayed fictional character in film history?

A. Santa Claus

B. Sherlock Holmes

C. Batman

35. What were Cinderella’s slippers originally made of before being changed by a translator?

A. Wood

B. Fur

C. Leather

36. What was the first American novel to sell a million copies?

A. Uncle Tom’s Cabin

B. To Kill a Mockingbird

C. The Catcher in the Rye

37. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle believed that this magician genuinely had magic powers.

A. Walford Bodie

B. Harry Houdini

C. George Valiantine

38. What is supposedly the first novel to be written on a typewriter?

A. Adventures of Tom Sawyer

B. Moby Dick

C. McTeague

39. What beloved cartoon character was banned in both Russia and China?

A. Mickey Mouse

B. Snoopy

C. Winnie-the-Pooh

40. Which author locked himself in a room with nothing but a shawl, paper, and a pen when he was running behind a deadline for a manuscript?

A. H.G. Wells

B. Douglas Adams

C. Victor Hugo

Answer Key:

Little-Known Facts About Literature

I hope the information I shared in this list enriches your view of your favorite authors and works of literature. These small details reveal another quality to their journey, from the struggles to the humorous oddities they’ve experienced.

Knowing more about the authors you love gives you the opportunity to understand them better. You gain insights on why they write that way, the kind of stories they do, or their inspirations for a certain work they’ve done. Plus, you can also use these fun facts to impress your friends at your next trivia night!

Do you know any cool facts about literature? Share them in the comments below!

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