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Classic Novels: fun facts and quiz
The essentials in 7 ideas, with fun facts, an illustrated story and a quiz to see how much you know.
The essentials
Don Quixote
Cervantes’ Don Quixote, published in 1605 and 1615, follows a man who reads so many knightly tales that he becomes a knight himself, tilting at windmills. It’s often called the first modern novel.
Key fact
“Tilting at windmills” means fighting imaginary enemies.
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice (1813) follows Elizabeth Bennet and Mr Darcy as first impressions give way to love.
Key fact
Austen published her novels anonymously.
Frankenstein
Mary Shelley began Frankenstein at 18, during a ghost-story contest in 1816. It’s often called the first science-fiction novel.
Key fact
Frankenstein is the scientist; his creation has no name.
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Gabriel García Márquez’s 1967 novel follows the Buendía family in the magical town of Macondo. It made “magical realism” famous around the world.
Key fact
García Márquez won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1982.
Nineteen Eighty-Four
George Orwell’s 1949 novel imagines a state that watches everyone, all the time. It gave us “Big Brother” and the “thought police”.
Key fact
“Orwellian” now describes intrusive, controlling government.
Epic Novels
Some novels are enormous. Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace follows Russian families through Napoleon’s invasion, across about 1,200 pages.
Key fact
Tolstoy’s wife Sophia copied out the manuscript by hand several times.
Loved Around the World
The Little Prince, by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (1943), is one of the most translated books ever, in over 500 languages and dialects.
Key fact
Saint-Exupéry was also a pilot.
Fun facts
Cervantes lost the use of his left hand fighting at the Battle of Lepanto in 1571.
Austen’s first title for Pride and Prejudice was First Impressions.
The same 1816 ghost-story contest also produced The Vampyre, an early vampire tale, by John Polidori.
García Márquez was so broke that his wife pawned household items to pay for posting the manuscript.
Orwell’s working title for Nineteen Eighty-Four was The Last Man in Europe.
Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time runs to over a million words, one of the longest novels ever.
Saint-Exupéry drew the book’s watercolour illustrations himself.
Story: The Fake Sequel
The Fake Sequel
1614. Nine years after Don Quixote’s success, a sequel appears, by someone calling himself Avellaneda. It isn’t by Cervantes, and it mocks him.
Cervantes hits back in his real Part Two, 1615. His characters have read the first book, and they hear about the fake one too.
Don Quixote even meets a character from the fake sequel, who ends up swearing that the other Quixote was an impostor.
True or false?
Tap your answer to see if you got it, and why.
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Question 1 of 10
Don Quixote attacks windmills, thinking they are giants.
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True. His most famous adventure.
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Question 2 of 10
Jane Austen published her novels anonymously.
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True. Signed only “By a Lady”.
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Question 3 of 10
Mary Shelley started Frankenstein as a teenager.
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True. She was 18.
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Question 4 of 10
One Hundred Years of Solitude is set in Macondo.
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True. A fictional town in Colombia.
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Question 5 of 10
Nineteen Eighty-Four introduced the idea of Big Brother.
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True. “Big Brother is watching you.”
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Question 6 of 10
War and Peace is set during Napoleon’s invasion of Russia.
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True. In 1812.
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Question 7 of 10
The Little Prince has been translated into hundreds of languages.
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True. Over 500 languages and dialects.
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Question 8 of 10
Don Quixote was written in the 1900s.
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False. It was published in 1605 and 1615.
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Question 9 of 10
Pride and Prejudice is a science-fiction novel.
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False. It’s a romantic novel of manners.
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Question 10 of 10
Frankenstein is the name of the monster.
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False. It’s the scientist’s name.
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Sources
- Encyclopaedia Britannica — Don Quixote, Pride and Prejudice, Frankenstein, Nineteen Eighty-Four, War and Peace
- Nobel Prize — Literature 1982 (Gabriel García Márquez)
- The British Library — Discovering Literature
- Fondation Antoine de Saint-Exupéry — The Little Prince in translation
- Encyclopaedia Britannica — Dumas, Dostoevsky, the Brontës, Achebe, Joyce, Fitzgerald
- The British Library — Discovering Literature
