The English Reader Quiz: Part One

So you think you are smart huh? Well now we are going to give you a chance to prove it. Michael and Diane Ravitch, the son and mother team that wrote The English Reader: What Every Literate Person Needs to Know (the sequel to The American Reader), have prepared a quiz to test your literary IQ. Below are the first five questions. Answers are after the jump and more questions will be posted throughout the week, so be sure to come back. If just can’t wait until then, read the Q & A we did with the authors.

1. “To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”
   1. Rudyard Kipling
   2. William Wordsworth
   3. Matthew Arnold
   4. Alfred, Lord Tennyson
2. “Bring me my Bow of burning gold:
   Bring me my Arrows of desire:
   Bring me my Spear: O clouds unfold!
   Bring me my chariot of fire!”
   1. Edward Fitzgerald
   2. William Blake
   3. John Milton
   4. William Shakespeare
3. “Culture has but one great passion, the passion for sweetness and light.”
   1. Jonathan Swift
   2. Oscar Wilde
   3. Matthew Arnold
   4. William Morris
4. “Teach erring man to spurn the rage of gain;
   Teach him that states of native strength possessed,
   Though very poor, may still be very blessed.”
   1. Alexander Pope
   2. William Blake
   3. Oliver Goldsmith
   4. John Dryden
5. “As good almost kill a man as kill a good book.”
   1. John Milton
   2. Samuel Johnson
   3. Virginia Woolf
   4. George Orwell

Answers after the jump.

1. The answer is 4; Alfred, Lord Tennyson
3. The answer is 2; William Blake
4. The answer is 3; Matthew Arnold
5. The answer is 3; Oliver Goldsmith
6. The answer is 1; John Milton