1. Who wrote, “All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn … There was nothing before. There has been nothing as good since"?

   1. Donna Tartt

   2. Ernest Hemingway

   3. Stephen King

   4. Bill Clinton

2. When is the novel set?

   1. 1820s

   2. 1840s

   3. 1860s

   4. 1880s

3. If Twain could not “think of something better to tell our pure-minded lads and lasses he had best stop writing for them". Which contemporary writer’s reaction to Huck Finn?

   1. Henry James

   2. Susan Coolidge

   3. Emily Dickinson

   4. Louisa May Alcott

4. What was Twain’s reaction to hearing that a library had banned the book for coarse language?

   1. “This will sell us another twenty-five thousand copies for sure!"

   2. “I reckon I’ll go down there and see if they try to ban me”

   3. “Librarians are nothing but old maids and vicars. Screw them”

   4. “Have these people never read the Bible? Huck is cleaner than fresh liquor compared to that old tome”

5. What is Huck doing when he says “All right, then, I'll go to hell”?

   1. Tearing up a letter giving the whereabouts of runaway slave Jim

   2. Deciding to run away

   3. Launching a boat on the Mississippi

   4. Making his way home

6. What visual prank halted the first print run?

   1. The typsetter jumbled Mark Twain’s name

   2. A shark’s fin was added to an illustration of the Mississippi

   3. In one engraving, Huck has six fingers

   4. Someone drew a penis on the front of Uncle Silas’s trousers

7. What did TS Eliot say made the book great?

   1. The Mississipi river

   2. Miss Watson’s moral vision

   3. Huck’s ambivalence towards slavery

   4. Twain's use of so many linguistic registers

8. Huckleberry Finn is the sequel to which book?

   1. Puddn’head Wilson

   2. Tom Sawyer Abroad

   3. Innocents Abroad

   4. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

9. “For its portrayal of an array of thoughtful, autonomous, and passionate black characters [it] leaves Huck Finn far behind.” Novelist Jane Smiley on which book?

   1. Beloved by Toni Morrison

   2. Little Eva: The Flower of the South by Philip J Cozans

   3. The House of the Seven Gables

   4. Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe

10. Huckleberry Finn provided which British writer with the title for one of their books?

    1. Peter Ackroyd

    2. Graham Swift

    3. Iain Sinclair

    4. Joanna Trollope

Solutions

1:B, 2:B, 3:D, 4:A, 5:A, 6:D, 7:A, 8:D, 9:D, 10:C

Scores

1. 3 and above.

   Well, your performance made me sick to see it; and I was sorry for you poor pitiful rascal

2. 5 and above.

   Not bad, but what's the use you learning to answer right, when it's troublesome to do right and ain't no trouble to do wrong, and the wages is just the same?

3. 8 and above.

   Outstanding. There was things which you stretched, but mainly you told the truth