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 49 of 160
- A. Skipping church on Sunday
- B. A woman screaming at her husband in public
- C. Stealing a horse
- D. Public drunkenness
Explanation: Horse theft was treated as a serious capital crime in Elizabethan England, reflecting the importance of horses for transport, agriculture…
Correct answer: Stealing a horse- A. The Star Chamber
- B. Parliament
- C. The Privy Council
- D. The Cabinet
Explanation: Elizabeth I was assisted by the Privy Council, a small group of senior advisers who helped manage government and foreign policy.
Correct answer: The Privy Council- A. Anne Boleyn
- B. Mary I
- C. Mary, Queen of Scots
- D. Catherine of Aragon
Explanation: Elizabeth I authorised the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots, in 1587 after Mary was implicated in the Babington Plot.
Correct answer: Mary, Queen of Scots- A. a series of Factory Acts
- B. the Custody Act
- C. the Women's Suffrage Act
- D. the Married Women's Property Rights ActsExplore Top Audiobooks
Explanation: A major British Women's Suffrage Act was not passed during Victoria's reign; the Representation of the People Act granting wider female…
Correct answer: the Women's Suffrage Act- A. The Romantics remained largely forgotten until their rediscovery by T. S. Eliot in the 1920s.
- B. The Victorians were disgusted by the immorality and narcissism of the Romantics.
- C. The Romantics were seen as gifted but crude artists belonging to a distant, semibarbarous age.
- D. The Victorians were strongly influenced by the Romantics and experienced a sense of belatedness.
Explanation: Victorian poets inherited much from Romantic poetry but often felt belated, writing after what they regarded as an earlier age of poetic…
Correct answer: The Victorians were strongly influenced by the Romantics and experienced a sense of belatedness.- A. studied melancholy and aestheticism
- B. sincere earnestness and Protestant zeal
- C. raucous celebration mixed with selfcongratulatory sophistication
- D. paranoid introspection and cryptic dissent
Explanation: The 1890s are associated with aestheticism, decadence, and a mood of melancholy rather than the confident moral earnestness of earlier…
Correct answer: studied melancholy and aestheticism- A. Between 1853 and 1880, 2,466,000 emigrants left Britain, many bound for the colonies.
- B. In 1876, Queen Victoria was named empress of India
- C. To save costs and maximize profits, the day-to-day government of India was transferred from Parliament to the private East India Company.
- D. From 1830 to 1870, the sum total of investments abroad by British capitalists had risen from £ 300 billion to £ 800 billion.
Explanation: The East India Company's administrative control ended in 1858 after the Indian Rebellion, when governance was transferred to the British…
Correct answer: To save costs and maximize profits, the day-to-day government of India was transferred from Parliament to the private East India Company.- A. 1843
- B. 1854
- C. 1892
- D. 1876
Explanation: Queen Victoria was proclaimed Empress of India in 1876 under the Royal Titles Act.
Correct answer: 1876- A. 1%
- B. 10%
- C. 15%
- D. 25%
Explanation: By the late nineteenth century, the British Empire ruled roughly a quarter of the world’s population, making Queen Victoria sovereign over…
Correct answer: 25%- A. the working classes
- B. women
- C. the lower middle classes
- D. slaves
Explanation: The Reform Act of 1832 enfranchised much of the urban middle class by extending the vote to property-owning men in the lower and middle…
Correct answer: the lower middle classes- A. King Henry VIII
- B. Queen Elizabeth I
- C. Queen Victoria
- D. King John
Explanation: The Victorian era is conventionally dated from Queen Victoria's accession in 1837 to her death in 1901.
Correct answer: Queen Victoria- A. They all belonged to the Oxford Movement
- B. They were all painters
- C. They were all Victorian Novelists
- D. They all belonged to the Pre- Raphaelite School
Explanation: Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Christina Rossetti, William Morris and Swinburne are linked with the Pre-Raphaelite circle and its aesthetic…
Correct answer: They all belonged to the Pre- Raphaelite School- A. the India Mutiny in 1857
- B. the Boer War in the south of Africa
- C. the Jamaica Rebellion in 1865
- D. all of the above
Explanation: The Indian Mutiny, the Jamaica Rebellion and the Boer War each exposed the violence, expense or political difficulty of imperial rule…
Correct answer: all of the above- A. Paris
- B. Tokyo
- C. London
- D. Amsterdam
Explanation: By the mid-nineteenth century, London was widely viewed as the centre of Western civilization because of Britain's industrial power…
Correct answer: London- A. They remained unmarried due to a population imbalance between the sexes.
- B. Their willingness to work for low wages resulted in a surplus of textiles, causing them to drop in price.
- C. They were women writers who wrote frequently about similar topics.
- D. They prostituted themselves as a way to make money in a market economy that didn't provide extensive job opportunities to women.
Explanation: “Surplus” or “redundant” women were considered excess because there were more women than men, leaving many unable to marry.
Correct answer: They remained unmarried due to a population imbalance between the sexes.- A. geology
- B. evolution
- C. discoveries in astronomy about stellar distances
- D. all of the above
Explanation: Geology challenged biblical timescales, evolution displaced human exceptionalism, and astronomy revealed the enormous scale of the…
Correct answer: all of the above- A. Methodist
- B. Imagism
- C. Oxford Movement
- D. Pre-Raphaelite
Explanation: Whitefield and Wesley led the eighteenth-century Methodist revival, which stressed personal conversion, energetic preaching, and…
Correct answer: Methodist- A. William Morris
- B. John Ruskin
- C. Edward FitzGerald
- D. all but c
Explanation: William Morris and John Ruskin developed social or proto-socialist ideas, while Edward FitzGerald is not normally associated with…
Correct answer: all but c- A. A group of unattractive people relegated to the colonies to perform missionary work where they wouldn't tarnish the aesthetics of the Church of England.
- B. Also called Nonconformists or Dissenters, Evangelicals led the missionary movement in the colonies, advocated a Puritan moral code, and were responsible for the emancipation of slaves in the British Empire as early as 1833.
- C. They were part of the High Church or the \Catholic\side of the church.
- D. They were devout \tractarians,\as described by John Henry Newman.
Explanation: Evangelicals formed the Low Church party and promoted strict morality, missionary activity, and the campaign against slavery.
Correct answer: Also called Nonconformists or Dissenters, Evangelicals led the missionary movement in the colonies, advocated a Puritan moral code, and were responsible for the emancipation of slaves in the British Empire as early as 1833.- A. a farming technique aimed at maximizing productivity with the fewest tools
- B. a moral arithmetic, which states that all humans aim to maximize the greatest pleasure to the greatest number
- C. a critical methodology stating that all words have a single meaningful function within a given piece of literature
- D. a philosophy dictating that we should only keep what we use on a daily basis.
Explanation: Utilitarianism, associated especially with Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill, judges actions by their consequences and seeks the…
Correct answer: a moral arithmetic, which states that all humans aim to maximize the greatest pleasure to the greatest number