Authors
Quotes
Art Film Music
History & Ideas
100

The English author of The Jungle Book (1894).



Rudyard Kipling

Kipling was born in British India and became a major writer of the British imperial period.

100


"Two roads diverged in a wood, and I - / I took the one less traveled by..." Name the poet.



Robert Frost

The lines come from The Road Not Taken (1915).

100


100

This 1961 musical film retells Romeo and Juliet through rival gangs in New York City.


West Side Story

The Jets and Sharks transform Shakespeare's feud into a story about ethnicity, territory and belonging.

100



The 1776 document that announced the thirteen American colonies' separation from Britain.


The Declaration of Independence

Its language about equality and rights became central to U.S. political culture.

200


The American author who wrote The Tell-Tale Heart and helped develop detective fiction.



Edgar Allan Poe

Poe is a central figure in American Gothic literature.

200


"We are striving to form a union that is perfect" echoes the opening of which U.S. founding document?



The U.S. Constitution

Its preamble begins with 'We the People' and the aim of forming 'a more perfect Union.'

200


This British rock band released Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band in 1967.



The Beatles

The album became a landmark in popular music and studio experimentation.

200



The 1920s cultural movement centered in New York that included Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston.


The Harlem Renaissance

It was a major flourishing of African American literature, music, art and intellectual life.

300


This Irish writer wrote The Importance of Being Earnest and The Picture of Dorian Gray.


Oscar Wilde

Wilde is famous for social satire, aestheticism and epigrammatic wit.

300


"Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary..." Name the poem AND author.


The Raven, Edgar Allan Poe

Published in 1845, the poem helped make Poe famous.

300


This British rock band released Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band in 1967.



The Beatles

The album became a landmark in popular music and studio experimentation.

300


The English philosopher who described life without common authority as 'solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.'



Thomas Hobbes

In Leviathan (1651), Hobbes argues that political authority is needed to escape violent insecurity.

400


This Nigerian novelist wrote Things Fall Apart, first published in 1958.


Chinua Achebe

The novel became a landmark of modern African literature in English and postcolonial writing.

400


"Four score and seven years ago..." Name the speaker AND speech.


Abraham Lincoln, the Gettysburg Address

Lincoln delivered the address in 1863 during the U.S. Civil War.

400


This British artist and poet created illuminated works such as The Ancient of Days and wrote Songs of Innocence and of Experience.


William Blake

Blake combined poetry and visual art and is central to British Romantic culture.

400


The 1947 event that created the independent states of India and Pakistan after British colonial rule.



The Partition of India

Partition produced mass migration, communal violence and long-lasting political consequences.

500


"Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths... Tread softly because you tread on my dreams." Name the Irish poet.


W. B. Yeats

The poem is commonly known as He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven.

500


The 1998 agreement that helped end most of the violence of the Troubles in Northern Ireland.


The Good Friday Agreement / Belfast Agreement

It created a power-sharing framework and was approved in referendums.