American Literature Study Guide

Literature 677 clues | 117 recurring answers

Topic Overview Study Guide Practice

117

answers to learn

13 Must-Know

23 Should-Know

81 Worth Knowing

Quick Reference: Must-Know Answers

These appear 8+ times. Memorize these first.

James Fenimore Cooper 17 Ernest Hemingway 15 Nathaniel Hawthorne 13 Edgar Allan Poe 12 Jack London 10 Faulkner 10 Mark Twain 9 Sinclair Lewis 9 Herman Melville 9 Washington Irving 8 F. Scott Fitzgerald 8 John Steinbeck 8 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 8

Answers by Category

Other

70 answers | 210 clues

Must-Know (3)

James Fenimore Cooper 17x 25.0% stumper $662 avg J:3 DJ:13 FJ:1

DJ $400 1996 His 1840 novel "The Pathfinder" is subtitled "The Inland Sea"

DJ $600 1994 This "Deerslayer" author's first book, "Precaution", was written on a dare from his wife

DJ $1,200 2020 This novelist of the frontier died in 1851 in a village his dad founded, the future home of the Baseball Hall of Fame

Sinclair Lewis 9x 33.3% stumper $1,300 avg J:1 DJ:8

DJ $200 1994 He wrote good later novels like "Cass Timberlane", but earlier ones like "Babbitt" are more famous

J $500 1998 "The Man from Main Street" is a collection of this Nobel Prize winner's essays

DJ $1,600 2018 "Arrowsmith" & "Elmer Gantry" are books by this man

Washington Irving 8x 40.0% stumper $840 avg DJ:5 FJ:3

DJ $200 1986 1st American writer to achieve internat'l fame, he spent nearly 20 years writing, not sleeping, in Europe

DJ $600 1991 This author spent the last 13 years of his life, from 1846-1859, at Sunnyside, his home in Tarrytown, NY

DJ $1,000 1989 While working at the U.S. embassy in Madrid, this Knickerbocker knocked out a Columbus bio

Should-Know (12)

Uncle Tom's Cabin 6x $400 avg J:1 DJ:3 FJ:2

DJ $200 1996 In this book Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote, "No one is so thoroughly superstitious as the godless man"

DJ $800 2015 This 1852 novel says, "It is a sin to hold a slave under laws like ours"

FJ 1997 Controversial even when serialized in the "National Era", it sold over 300,000 copies in book form in 1852

Henry James 6x $880 avg DJ:5 FJ:1

DJ $600 1990 His brother William was a famous American philosopher

DJ $1,000 1998 Olive Chancellor was into woman's lib in his 1886 novel "The Bostonians"

FJ 1997 One of the USA's greatest novelists, he lived most of his life, from 1876 to 1916, in England

Larry McMurtry 5x 60.0% stumper $1,040 avg DJ:5

DJ $400 1990 He wrote "Cadillac Jack" & "Lonesome Dove" after "Terms of Endearment"

DJ $600 1999 "Horseman, Pass By", the first novel by this Texan, was made into the movie "Hud" in 1963

DJ $1,600 2020 Author-run bookstores include Ann Patchett's Parnassus Books in Nashville & his Booked Up Inc. in Archer City, Texas

Carson McCullers 5x $840 avg DJ:5

DJ $800 1995 Her 1940 novel "The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter" is a parable on Fascism

DJ $1,000 1994 Tennessee Williams considered her novella "The Ballad of the Sad Cafe" a masterpiece

DJ $600 1995 In 1930 this author dramatized her 1946 novel "The Member of the Wedding"

William Styron 4x 75.0% stumper $900 avg J:1 DJ:3

J $800 2023 Though he would continue to write nonfiction & essays, "Sophie's Choice" was his last novel

DJ $1,200 2014 Research for his novel "Sophie's Choice" included a reading of the memoirs of the commandant of Auschwitz

DJ $800 1996 He modeled Sophie in "Sophie's Choice" on a woman he met while living in Brooklyn

Sister Carrie 4x 25.0% stumper $1,250 avg DJ:4

DJ $600 1995 This Theodore Dreiser heroine is 18 when she leaves her Wisconsin home & moves to Chicago

DJ $3,000 DD 2006 Caroline Meeber is the title character of this 1900 novel

DJ $600 1994 This 1st Theodore Dreiser novel shocked the publisher's wife, who kept it from wide distribution

Joseph Heller 4x $275 avg J:2 DJ:2

DJ $200 1988 After his "Catch-22", "Something Happened", "Good as Gold", "God Knows"

J $300 1998 When he began writing "Catch-22", he was an advertising writer for TIME magazine

DJ $400 1986 His experiences as a bombardier in WWII were the basis of the novel "Catch-22"

Edna Ferber 4x $750 avg DJ:4

DJ $800 1991 Her 1930 novel "Cimarron" told the story of the 1889 land rush in Oklahoma

DJ $600 1985 Her "Giant" grew into an epic movie

DJ $800 1994 "Ice Palace", her last novel, was published in 1958, 10 years before her death

Edgar Rice Burroughs 4x $600 avg J:1 DJ:3

J $200 1998 As a war correspondant, this Tarzan creator witnessed the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor

DJ $1,600 2024 In 1992 this "Naked Lunch" author had a shaman perform an exorcism on him to cast out what he called "the ugly spirit"

DJ $200 1991 At 66, this Tarzan creator was the oldest correspondent in the South Pacific during WWII

Theodore Dreiser 4x 25.0% stumper $900 avg DJ:4

DJ $600 1994 The hostile reception of his "Sister Carrie" contributed to his nervous breakdown

DJ $1,000 1999 His novel "Sister Carrie" was inspired by his own sister Emma, who ran off with a married man

DJ $1,000 1985 "Dusk--of a summer night" is the first paragraph of his "An American Tragedy"

Babbitt 4x $800 avg J:1 DJ:3

DJ $800 1995 The middle name of this Sinclair Lewis title character is Follansbee

DJ $800 2002 Sinclair Lewis' real estate salesman who's "never done a single thing I've wanted to do in my whole life"

DJ $800 DD 1990 Arrowsmith was a doctor, & this Sinclair Lewis title character was a realtor

(James) Baldwin 4x 25.0% stumper $1,300 avg J:1 DJ:3

J $1,000 2023 A story of love & racial injustice, his 1974 novel "If Beale Street Could Talk" was turned into a 2018 film

DJ $1,000 1990 His 1st novel, "Go Tell It On The Mountain", was based on his early childhood in Harlem

DJ $2,000 2002 "Go Tell It on the Mountain" that he finished the novel while in Switzerland in 1952

Worth Knowing (55)

Winesburg, Ohio 3 The Red Badge of Courage 3 The Natural 3 the Civil War 3 Joyce Carol Oates 3 John Dos Passos 3 Margaret Mitchell 3 John Updike 3 Daniel Webster 3 Anne Tyler 3 (Edith) Wharton 3 Martin Arrowsmith 3 Zane Grey 2 William Kennedy 2 White Fang 2 Thomas Wolfe 2 The Secret Life of Walter Mitty 2 The Miracle Worker 2 The Jungle 2 The Heart is a Lonely Hunter 2 The Age of Innocence 2 Shirley Jackson 2 Saul Bellow 2 Roots 2 Philip Roth 2 On the Road 2 Norman Mailer 2 Natty Bumppo 2 Miss Lonelyhearts 2 Kansas 2 John O'Hara 2 Ishmael 2 Isaac Asimov 2 In Cold Blood 2 Huey Long 2 Gentlemen Prefer Blondes 2 Fahrenheit 451 2 Dana 2 Cotton Mather 2 Catch-22 2 Billy Bathgate 2 All The King's Men 2 Alex Haley 2 (Ralph) Ellison 2 Life on the Mississippi 2 The Man Without a Country 2 The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn 2 S.E. Hinton 2 O. Henry 2 James Michener 2 Jack Kerouac 2 Henry Miller 2 Grisham 2 Booth Tarkington 2 Bernard Malamud 2

American Literature

23 answers | 118 clues

Must-Know (5)

Ernest Hemingway 15x 8.3% stumper $433 avg J:3 DJ:9 FJ:3

J $200 1998 In his 1932 book "Death in the Afternoon", he treated bullfighting as a tragic ritual rather than sport

DJ $800 2012 He's the author picturedherein 1960 with the winner of his fishing competition, Fidel Castro

DJ $1,000 DD 1995 Nick Adams is the hero of many of the stories in his 1925 collection "In Our Time"

Nathaniel Hawthorne 13x 25.0% stumper $800 avg J:1 DJ:11 FJ:1

DJ $400 2008 Perhaps his first collection of stories, "Twice-Told Tales", was printed in scarlet letters?

DJ $800 1995 This native of Salem, Mass. published his novel "Fanshawe" anonymously & never admitted that he wrote it

DJ $1,000 1996 His last completed novel, "The Marble Faun", was published in 1860

Jack London 10x $550 avg J:1 DJ:7 FJ:2

DJ $400 2024 Best known for his Alaska-based adventures, one involving dogs, he spent lots of time in Hawaii before his death in 1916

DJ $800 2017 This Jack of many trades sought fortune in the 1897 Klondike gold rush & used the experience in his books

DJ $1,600 2012 In 1913, just days before he was to move into his "Wolf House" in northern Calif., the house was destroyed by a fire

Mark Twain 9x $300 avg J:2 DJ:2 FJ:5

J $100 1998 Samuel Clemens first used this pseudonym on February 3, 1863 in Virginia City's Territorial Enterprise

DJ $800 DD 2004 In "Following the Equator", this humorist wrote, "Truth is the most valuable thing we have. Let us economize it"

FJ 2021 "Camelot", "The Pilgrims" & "A Postscript by Clarence" are chapters in a classic novel by this author

F. Scott Fitzgerald 8x 25.0% stumper $950 avg J:3 DJ:5

DJ $400 1994 While stationed in Alabama in 1918. he met Zelda Sayre; 2 years later they were married

J $500 1984 Great-grand nephew of Francis Scott Key, he was the voice of the Jazz Age

DJ $2,000 2015 In a short story by this man, Percy says his father has "a diamond bigger than the Ritz-Carlton Hotel"

Should-Know (7)

Willa Cather 7x 14.3% stumper $786 avg J:2 DJ:5

J $300 1998 The town of Red Cloud, Nebraska has a historical center devoted to this author

DJ $800 1994 Her only Pulitzer Prize for fiction was for "One of Ours", not "My Antonia"

DJ $1,000 DD 1993 Her "Death Comes for the Archbishop" was inspired by the letters of the real-life Father Machebeuf

Louisa May Alcott 7x $267 avg J:1 DJ:5 FJ:1

DJ $200 1995 She wrote what she called "rubbishy novels" before the success of "Little Women"

J $600 2019 Her alter ego Jo March gets $100 for a story she has written

FJ 2020 Reluctant to write what became her most famous novel, she said, "Never liked girls or knew many, except my sisters"

Harriet Beecher Stowe 6x $440 avg J:1 DJ:4 FJ:1

DJ $200 1994 In 1853 she wrote "A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin" to defend the accuracy of the earlier book

J $600 2007 (Alex reports from the Mark Twain House.) Mark Twain said that this anti-slaverynovelist, his next-door neighbor, liked to sneak up behind people and "fetch a war-whoop that would jump that person out of his clothes"

FJ 2018 Her 1896 New York Times obituary called her "the writer of probably the most widely read work of fiction ever penned"

The Great Gatsby 5x $850 avg J:1 DJ:3 FJ:1

DJ $400 2006 Jay is the first name of the title character of this F. Scott Fitzgerald novel

J $600 2015 The old money & new money Long Island neighborhoods in this novel are East Egg & West Egg

DJ $1,600 2005 This 1925 novel contains the line "They were careless people, Tom and Daisy"

Truman Capote 4x $600 avg J:1 DJ:2 FJ:1

J $400 1998 Harper Lee helped him research an article which developed into the work "In Cold Blood"

DJ $1,000 1989 "More tears are shed over answered prayers than unanswered" was 1 of this author's favorite quotes

FJ 2008 In 1958 he wrote, "Brazil was beastly but Buenos Aires was the best. Not Tiffany's, but almost"

The Sun Also Rises 4x 25.0% stumper $700 avg J:2 DJ:2

DJ $400 1998 Hemingway took the title of this novel about journalist Jake Barnes from a passage in Ecclesiastes

DJ $600 1997 Characters in this Hemingway novel include Jake Barnes, Lady Brett Ashley & Pedro Romero, a bullfighter

J $1,000 2015 Bullfights & heavy drinking are the order of the day in this 1926 novel with a title from Ecclesiastes

Gertrude Stein 4x 25.0% stumper $1,475 avg DJ:4

DJ $600 1993 She referred to the many American writers in Paris after World War I as the "Lost Generation"

DJ $2,200 DD 1989 Clifton Fadiman dubbed this expatriate American "The Mama of Dada"

DJ $600 1987 She studied psychology with William James at Radcliffe before she founded the "Lost Generation"

Worth Knowing (11)

Moby-Dick 3 Kurt Vonnegut 3 A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court 3 Buck 3 Toni Morrison 2 The Sound and the Fury 2 The Scarlet Letter 2 The House of the Seven Gables 2 Huckleberry Finn 2 Emerson 2 Billy Budd 2

Poetry

11 answers | 57 clues

Must-Know (4)

Edgar Allan Poe 12x 33.3% stumper $556 avg J:2 DJ:7 FJ:3

J $100 1997 Mrs. Marie Louise Shew inspired this poet to write about the bells that annoyed him

DJ $800 1988 It's said he was kidnapped in Baltimore during the 1849 election & forced to vote so many times he collapsed & died

DJ $2,000 2024 The stars guide the narrator of his Gothic poem "Ulalume"

Herman Melville 9x $629 avg DJ:7 FJ:2

DJ $200 1998 J.N. Reynolds' "Mocha Dick", about a white whale, was published 12 years before this man's "Moby Dick"

DJ $600 1990 He lived for several weeks among the cannibalistic Typee before he wrote the book of the same name

DJ $1,000 1992 His 1853 short story "Bartleby the Scrivener" is subtitled "A Story of Wall Street"

John Steinbeck 8x $467 avg DJ:6 FJ:2

DJ $200 1991 He was born in Salinas, California, the setting for his "East of Eden"

DJ $600 1997 He described the setting of "Cannery Row" as "A poem, a stink...a habit, a nostalgia, a dream"

FJ 2016 Nominated 8 previous times, he finally won a Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962, 6 years before his death

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 8x 37.5% stumper $562 avg J:1 DJ:7

DJ $200 1989 This author of "The Courtship of Miles Standish" was descended from John & Priscilla Alden

DJ $800 1991 He was writing about his ancestors Miles Standish & Priscilla Mullins in "The Courtship of Miles Standish"

DJ $1,600 2008 This 3-named American poet wanted the ship of state to "sail on... strong and great"

Should-Know (2)

Thoreau 5x $320 avg J:2 DJ:3

J $100 1999 Urged to make his peace with God, this "Walden" author replied, "I did not know we had ever quarreled"

J $500 1989 Emerson employed this controversial friend & essayist as a handyman around the house

DJ $200 1986 Walden Pond rustic who advised us to "simplify, simplify"

Walt Whitman 5x 20.0% stumper $640 avg DJ:5

DJ $400 2014 A poem of his says grass is "the beautiful uncut hair of graves"

DJ $1,000 1992 In "I Sing the Body Electric" he said, "These are not the parts & poems of the body only, but of the soul"

DJ $400 1988 He wrote several anonymous reviews praising the genius of his own "Leaves of Grass"

Worth Knowing (5)

Spoon River Anthology 2 Robert Frost 2 Ogden Nash 2 The Call of the Wild 2 Stephen Vincent Benet 2

Children's Literature

6 answers | 20 clues

Should-Know (2)

Stephen Crane 6x $540 avg DJ:5 FJ:1

DJ $400 1996 "George's Mother" is a lesser-known novel by this author of "The Red Badge of Courage"

DJ $1,500 DD 1995 Henry Fleming, hero of a classic 1895 novel, is a grandfather in this author's 1896 story "The Veteran"

FJ 1990 He died at age 28, just 5 years after his Civil War novel was published

L. Frank Baum 5x 25.0% stumper $1,350 avg J:1 DJ:3 FJ:1

DJ $400 1996 He wrote that in Oz he eliminated the stereotyped genie, dwarf & fairy of old-time tales

J $800 2007 Under the name Laura Bancroft, he wrote about Twinkle & Chubbins in Nature Fairyland after taking us to Oz

DJ $1,200 2012 He was born in Chittenango, New York in 1856 & soon realized he wasn't in Kansas anymore

Worth Knowing (4)

Dr. Seuss 3 Rip Van Winkle 2 Louis L'Amour 2 The Good Earth 2

Mystery / Thriller

5 answers | 11 clues

Worth Knowing (5)

Cormac McCarthy 3 Tom Sawyer 2 Lillian Hellman 2 Stephen King 2 Dashiell Hammett 2

Shakespeare

1 answers | 10 clues

Must-Know (1)

Faulkner 10x $930 avg J:1 DJ:9

DJ $400 2005 "Sartoris" published in 1929 was his first novel to deal with Yoknapatawpha County

DJ $600 1995 His 1949 book "Knight's Gambit" is a collection of interrelated detective stories set in Mississippi

DJ $1,600 2013 His 1942 story "The Bear" relates the story of Ike McCaslin & his companions as they hunt a bear named Old Ben

British Literature

1 answers | 2 clues

Worth Knowing (1)

Laura Ingalls Wilder 2

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