All Free English Literature MCQs with Answers

• A. Pastoral elegy
• B. Prose polemic
• C. Blank verse tragedy
• D. Masque

Explanation: Areopagitica is Milton's prose polemic against licensing and pre-publication censorship, published in 1644.

• A. the king
• B. the House of Lords
• C. popular election
• D. God

Explanation: Milton supported republican government and held that political authority should derive from the people rather than hereditary monarchy or…

• A. "Paradise Lost"
• B. "Samson Agonistes"
• C. "Areopagitica"
• D. "Paradise Regained"

Explanation: Areopagitica is Milton's prose polemic against licensing and censorship, published in 1644.

• A. 1628
• B. 1649
• C. 1645
• D. 1637

Explanation: Milton published The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates in 1649, after the execution of Charles I.

• A. Edmund Spencer
• B. John Donne
• C. Sir Philip Sidney
• D. John Milton

Explanation: Fulke Greville wrote The Life of the Renowned Sir Philip Sidney, an important early biography of Sidney.

• A. Thomas More
• B. Thomas lodge
• C. Ralph Robinson
• D. William Tyndale

Explanation: Ralph Robinson produced the first English translation of Thomas More’s Utopia in 1551.

• A. William Caxton
• B. Robert Henry
• C. John Lyly
• D. Thomas more

Explanation: William Caxton, England’s first printer, was born around 1422. His printing of English literary works helped establish the development of…

• A. John Donne
• B. John Milton
• C. Earnest Hemingway
• D. Lawrence

Explanation: These lines come from John Donne’s prose work Devotions upon Emergent Occasions, specifically Meditation XVII.

• A. Letters to the Margret Paston
• B. Margret Paston to John Paston
• C. The Paston letters
• D. To John Paston

Explanation: The Paston Letters are a collection of private correspondence from the Paston family of Norfolk, covering family, social, political, and…

• A. Wyclif
• B. Thomas more
• C. John Lyly
• D. Robert Greene

Explanation: John Wyclif is traditionally credited with the first complete English Bible translation, produced in the late fourteenth century by his…

• A. 1615
• B. 1516
• C. 1517
• D. 1518

Explanation: Thomas More’s Utopia was first printed in Latin at Louvain in 1516. The nearby dates 1517 and 1518 are therefore common distractors.

• A. Carpenter
• B. Civil servant
• C. Cobbler
• D. Farmer

Explanation: Christopher Marlowe's father, John Marlowe, was a shoemaker, also called a cobbler.

• A. Leo Tolstoy
• B. Alexander pope
• C. Emile Zola
• D. Khalid Hosseini

Explanation: Emile Zola wrote the French novel La Joie de vivre, whose English title is commonly rendered as The Joy of Life or Zest for Life.

• A. Napoleon Hill
• B. Newton
• C. Paulo Coelho
• D. Helen Frowe

Explanation: The Alchemist is a widely read novel by the Brazilian author Paulo Coelho, first published in Portuguese in 1988.

• A. Thomas Hardy
• B. R R Tolkien

Explanation: J. R. R. Tolkien wrote The Lord of the Rings, the high-fantasy trilogy set largely in Middle-earth.

• A. Mrs. Morel
• B. Annie
• C. Miriam
• D. Clara Dawes

Explanation: Clara Dawes is portrayed as an independent-minded woman associated with the women's-rights movement in Sons and Lovers.

• A. The Return of the Native
• B. Desperate Remedies
• C. A Pair of Blue
• D. None of these

Explanation: Desperate Remedies, published in 1871, was Thomas Hardy’s first published novel.

• A. The Poor Man and the Lady
• B. The Return of Native
• C. The Woodlanders
• D. All of the above

Explanation: All three titles are associated with Thomas Hardy: The Poor Man and the Lady was an early unpublished novel, while The Return of the…

• A. Chinua Achebe
• B. Toni Morrison
• C. Ahmed Sulman Rushdie
• D. Sylvia Plath

Explanation: The Bluest Eye, correctly titled without the final plural s, was Toni Morrison’s first novel and appeared in 1970.

• A. Chinua Achebe
• B. Toni Morrison
• C. Ahmed Salman Rushdie
• D. None of these

Explanation: Shame is a 1983 novel by Salman Rushdie, set in a fictionalized version of Pakistan and concerned with political and social shame.