All Free English Literature MCQs with Answers

Every English Literature question in the bank, across all chapters, each with the correct answer and a written explanation. Free and unlimited, with no account needed.

3,192 questions · page 130 of 160

  • A. The Faerie Queene
  • B. The shepheaedes Calendar
  • C. Complaints
  • D. Colin Clouts come home again

Explanation: Spenser dedicated The Shepheardes Calender to Sir Philip Sidney, whom he admired as a fellow poet and patron.

Correct answer: The shepheaedes Calendar
  • A. Sir Philip Sidney
  • B. John Milton
  • C. Edmund Spencer
  • D. John Donne

Explanation: The inscription praising the “Prince of Poets in his time” refers to Edmund Spenser, whose major work was The Faerie Queene.

Correct answer: Edmund Spencer
  • A. Allegory
  • B. Epic
  • C. Sonnet
  • D. Ballad

Explanation: Astrophel and Stella is a sonnet sequence by Sir Philip Sidney, consisting of linked sonnets and songs about love.

Correct answer: Sonnet
  • A. Thomas Sacville
  • B. Thomas Wyatt
  • C. Thomas lodge
  • D. Thomas Kyde

Explanation: The Mirror for Magistrates is associated with Thomas Sackville, who contributed the influential opening section known as “Induction.” The…

Correct answer: Thomas Sacville
  • A. His visit to Lake District
  • B. Keats' lodging in the attic above the
  • C. surgery at 7 Church Street
  • D. Keats stay in Italy
  • E. Keats' travel to Alps

Explanation: Cowden Clarke regarded Keats's period lodging in the attic as the most tranquil or placid phase of his life.

Correct answer: Keats' lodging in the attic above the
  • A. La Belle Dame Sans Mercy
  • B. Ode on a Grecian Urn
  • C. Ode to a Skylark
  • D. An Imitation of Spenser

Explanation: An Imitation of Spenser, written in 1814, is generally regarded as Keats's first surviving poem.

Correct answer: An Imitation of Spenser
  • A. Queen's Chamber
  • B. Guy's Hospital
  • C. New Chapman Hospital
  • D. Trinity Hospital

Explanation: After completing his apprenticeship, Keats registered as a medical student at Guy's Hospital in London.

Correct answer: Guy's Hospital
  • A. John Clarke's school
  • B. King's Grammar School
  • C. Harrow
  • D. Eton

Explanation: Keats attended John Clarke's school at Enfield, where he developed a strong interest in literature and classical learning.

Correct answer: John Clarke's school
  • A. teacher
  • B. surgeon
  • C. banker
  • D. lawyer

Explanation: Thomas Hammond was a surgeon and apothecary in Edmonton, under whom Keats trained as an apprentice.

Correct answer: surgeon
  • A. 11 May 1838
  • B. 12 March 1833
  • C. 23 February 1821
  • D. 19 August 1825

Explanation: Keats died in Rome on 23 February 1821, aged only 25, after suffering from tuberculosis.

Correct answer: 23 February 1821
  • A. 25 December 1767
  • B. 30 April 1789
  • C. 31 October 1795
  • D. 22 November 1756

Explanation: John Keats was born on 31 October 1795 in London. He belongs to the younger generation of English Romantic poets, alongside Shelley and…

Correct answer: 31 October 1795
  • A. R.K. Narayan
  • B. Salman Rushdie
  • C. Jhumpa Lahiri
  • D. Arundhuti Roy

Explanation: The Satanic Verses is a 1988 novel by Salman Rushdie that explores migration, identity, religion, and cultural conflict.

Correct answer: Salman Rushdie
  • A. Anthony Mascarenhas
  • B. Mathew Arnold
  • C. G. B. Shaw
  • D. Alexander Dumas

Explanation: The Rape of Bangladesh was written by Anthony Mascarenhas, a Pakistani journalist whose reports exposed the violence surrounding the…

Correct answer: Anthony Mascarenhas
  • A. Tahmima Anam
  • B. Pearl S. Bark
  • C. Virginia Woolf
  • D. Jane Austen

Explanation: Tahmima Anam, a Bangladeshi writer, wrote The Golden Age, a novel set against the Bangladesh Liberation War of 1971. Pearl S.

Correct answer: Tahmima Anam
  • A. Rudyard Kipling
  • B. Edward Fitzgerald
  • C. Charlotte Bronte
  • D. Any of these

Explanation: All three writers can be discussed in relation to Britain’s imperial world: Kipling directly represented empire, FitzGerald engaged with…

Correct answer: Any of these
  • A. Shaw
  • B. Ibsen
  • C. Yeats
  • D. none of these

Explanation: William Butler Yeats served two terms as an Irish senator in the Seanad Éireann.

Correct answer: Yeats
  • A. Arobinda Adigha
  • B. Salman Rushdie
  • C. Arundhoti Roy
  • D. Kiron Dishai

Explanation: The White Tiger is the debut novel of Indian writer Aravind Adiga, and it won the 2008 Booker Prize.

Correct answer: Arobinda Adigha
  • A. Britain's manifest destiny to colonize the world
  • B. the moral responsibility to bring civilization and Christianity to the peoples of the world
  • C. the British need to improve technology and transportation in other parts of the world
  • D. the importance of solving economic and social problems in England before tackling the world's problems

Explanation: In Kipling's phrase, the 'burden' was the claimed duty of imperial powers to civilize and Christianize colonized peoples.

Correct answer: the moral responsibility to bring civilization and Christianity to the peoples of the world
  • A. It brought the last group of English convicts to Australia in 1901.
  • B. It was sunk by the German navy in 1914, bringing the United States into World War I.
  • C. It brought the first group of immigrants from Jamaica to England in 1948.
  • D. It delivered a small dog into space in 1959, and returned it to earth.

Explanation: The Empire Windrush arrived in Britain from Jamaica in 1948, carrying one of the first major groups of postwar Caribbean immigrants.

Correct answer: It brought the first group of immigrants from Jamaica to England in 1948.
  • A. W. B. Yeats
  • B. James Joyce
  • C. Seamus Heaney
  • D. none of the above

Explanation: Yeats, Joyce, and Heaney are all conventionally classified as Irish writers, though Heaney was born in Northern Ireland and Yeats was born…

Correct answer: none of the above