Famous Authors Quiz: Writers From Austen to Murakami

This famous authors quiz is about the writers behind the books, from Jane Austen, Mary Shelley and Arthur Conan Doyle to Leo Tolstoy, Mark Twain, Agatha Christie, George Orwell, Gabriel García Márquez, Orhan Pamuk and Haruki Murakami. Ten questions, 90 seconds.

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🎯 Daily Trivia Challenge • 🧠 10 Questions • ⏱️ 90 Seconds

Question 1 / 10 Time: 90s

Classics
Who wrote Pride and Prejudice?
Mystery
Which author created the detective Sherlock Holmes?
Russian
Which Russian author wrote War and Peace?
American
Which author wrote The Adventures of Tom Sawyer under a pen name?
Latin America
Who wrote One Hundred Years of Solitude?
Nobel Prize
Which Turkish novelist won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2006?
Gothic
Who wrote Frankenstein, first published in 1818?
Mystery
Which author created the Belgian detective Hercule Poirot?
Pen Names
What was George Orwell's real name?
Japan
Which Japanese author wrote Norwegian Wood and Kafka on the Shore?

Explanations: answer key for all 10 questions

Q1: Who wrote Pride and Prejudice?
Answer: Jane Austen
Jane Austen published Pride and Prejudice in 1813 without her name on it; the title page said only By the Author of Sense and Sensibility. Her face now appears on the Bank of England's 10-pound note.
Q2: Which author created the detective Sherlock Holmes?
Answer: Arthur Conan Doyle
Arthur Conan Doyle was a doctor who based Holmes's powers of deduction partly on his medical teacher, Joseph Bell. He once killed Holmes off, but readers' protests brought him back.
Q3: Which Russian author wrote War and Peace?
Answer: Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace, published in the 1860s, follows Russian families during Napoleon's invasion. Tolstoy also wrote Anna Karenina.
Q4: Which author wrote The Adventures of Tom Sawyer under a pen name?
Answer: Mark Twain
Mark Twain was the pen name of Samuel Clemens, a riverboat term meaning two fathoms deep. He grew up in Hannibal, Missouri, on the Mississippi River.
Q5: Who wrote One Hundred Years of Solitude?
Answer: Gabriel García Márquez
Colombian author Gabriel García Márquez published the novel in 1967 and won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1982. It is a landmark of magical realism.
Q6: Which Turkish novelist won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2006?
Answer: Orhan Pamuk
Orhan Pamuk, author of My Name Is Red and Snow, was the first Turkish writer to win the Nobel. His Museum of Innocence in Istanbul is a real museum based on his novel.
Q7: Who wrote Frankenstein, first published in 1818?
Answer: Mary Shelley
Mary Shelley began the story at age 18 during a ghost-story contest with Lord Byron and Percy Shelley near Lake Geneva. Frankenstein is often called the first science-fiction novel.
Q8: Which author created the Belgian detective Hercule Poirot?
Answer: Agatha Christie
Agatha Christie is the best-selling novelist of all time, with around 2 billion copies sold. Her play The Mousetrap has run in London since 1952.
Q9: What was George Orwell's real name?
Answer: Eric Arthur Blair
Eric Arthur Blair wrote Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four as George Orwell. Samuel Clemens was Mark Twain, and Mary Ann Evans wrote as George Eliot.
Q10: Which Japanese author wrote Norwegian Wood and Kafka on the Shore?
Answer: Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami ran a jazz bar in Tokyo before becoming a writer. His novels have been translated into about 50 languages and are known for their dreamlike, surreal touches.

Famous Authors Quiz – The Writers Behind Great Books

Behind every great book is a writer with a story of their own. Some wrote in secret, some used pen names and some only became famous long after their deaths. Learning about authors helps us understand their books, from the society Jane Austen described in Regency England to the war Leo Tolstoy recreated in nineteenth-century Russia.

Several authors in this quiz created characters more famous than themselves. Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes and Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot are known around the world, and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein has become shorthand for science gone wrong. Others are famous for their pen names: Mark Twain, George Orwell and George Eliot all wrote under names that were not their own.

Literature is truly global. Gabriel García Márquez brought the magical realism of Latin America to readers everywhere, Orhan Pamuk wrote about Istanbul between East and West and became Turkey's first Nobel laureate, and Haruki Murakami's dreamlike novels have made him one of the most translated living authors.

Many of these writers had other careers first. Conan Doyle was a doctor, Twain worked on riverboats and Murakami ran a jazz bar before writing his first novel at the age of 29.

This quiz focuses on the people behind the pages rather than the plots alone.

Readers often visit the places linked to their favorite writers. Jane Austen's house in Chawton, Mark Twain's boyhood home in Hannibal, the Sherlock Holmes Museum on London's Baker Street and Pamuk's Museum of Innocence in Istanbul all draw literary tourists from around the world.

What This Quiz Teaches

This quiz is ideal for book lovers, students of literature and anyone building a reading list.

Who wrote Pride and Prejudice, Frankenstein and War and Peace
Who created Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot
Which famous writers used pen names
Why García Márquez and Pamuk won the Nobel Prize
How Mary Shelley came to write Frankenstein
What Haruki Murakami did before writing

Quick Facts About Famous Authors

Charles Dickens published most of his novels in monthly or weekly parts.
J.R.R. Tolkien invented several complete languages for Middle-earth.
Ernest Hemingway rewrote the ending of A Farewell to Arms dozens of times.
The Brontë sisters first published under the male names Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell.
Shakespeare is the most translated playwright in the world.
Toni Morrison became the first Black woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, in 1993.