Can you name the author by the first major published work?

Book	Author	Year
Digital Fortress		1998
Grimus		1975
And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street		1937
The Pickwick Papers		1836
The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County		1865
Interview With the Vampire		1976
Down and Out in Paris and London		1933
The Mysterious Affair at Styles		1920
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy		1979
The Torrents of Spring		1926
Sense and Sensibility		1811
Blind Date		1986

Book	Author	Year
Player Piano		1952
A Time to Kill		1989
The Notebook		1996
A Cup of Gold		1929
Twilight		2003
Carrie		1974
The Stranger		1942
The Tale of Peter Rabbit		1901
The Andromeda Strain		1969
The Hunt for Red October		1984
This Side of Paradise		1920
The One in the Middle Is the Green Kangaroo		1969
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone	1969

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There are 50 comments for this game.
(Warning: comments may contain spoilers)

First Works Quiz

by pinballwiz

Created Dec 16, 2009 in Literature
Featured Jun 16, 2010
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	bostonbeliever:	Jun 16th, 2010 at 19:01 GMT		17 points
	why is J.K. Rowling a bonus?

	emn8:	Jun 16th, 2010 at 19:02 GMT		1 point
	If you must include Twilight, at least spell its author's name properly: S-T-E-P-H-E-N-I-E. Like "Stephen," except for a girl.

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	Aaron_Kashtan:	Jun 16th, 2010 at 19:11 GMT		7 points
	Does Sketches by Boz not count as a major work?

	springmom:	Jun 16th, 2010 at 19:23 GMT		1 point
	It's Interview with THE Vampire. Please change it...thanks.

	ashman:	Jun 16th, 2010 at 19:31 GMT		0 points
	Yes! What springmom said. Why does everyone always get that wrong?

	caramba:	Jun 16th, 2010 at 19:35 GMT		2 points
	Waiting for first commenter saying they're proud they missed the Twilight one....zzzz...

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	MonteCresta:	Jun 16th, 2010 at 19:49 GMT		0 points
	No Shakespeare?

	corndog:	Jun 16th, 2010 at 19:53 GMT		13 points
	Really, Rowling shouldn't be a bonus. I suggest replacing Meyer with Rowling.

	jefe_:	Jun 16th, 2010 at 20:00 GMT		-4 points
	Never would've guessed that some of those were their first works. And I don't know why R. L. Stine came to mind. Replace or append The Stranger with L'Étranger, please.

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	Spammo:	Jun 16th, 2010 at 20:42 GMT		26 points
	Ok, I hate to go all Movie Dynamic on you, and I hate to be critical but why do all of the literature quizzes repeat all of the same authors? I'm all for a mixture of classic/popular, but I think at this point we all know the five books that Stephanie Meyer and Dan Brown wrote. It ceases to be a challenge after awhile.

	Icicle:	Jun 16th, 2010 at 20:46 GMT		5 points
	@BamaRainbow Why are you even arguing? Stephen is a boys name. Stephenie is the author's name. So what if other people spell it differently?

	redsxfenway:	Jun 16th, 2010 at 20:54 GMT		6 points
	If you accept Clemens and Geisel, you should accept Blair.

	FloraDora:	Jun 16th, 2010 at 21:07 GMT		2 points
	R.L. Stine! Yes!

	NYCub:	Jun 16th, 2010 at 21:48 GMT		4 points
	Michael Crichton published several novels before "The Andromeda Strain," including "A Case of Need," which definitely counts as a major work.

	multislack:	Jun 16th, 2010 at 21:59 GMT		1 point
	Awkward. I just finished reading a book by one of these authors earlier today... yet I missed it.

	sporcloid:	Jun 16th, 2010 at 22:01 GMT		6 points
	Cup of Gold, not A Cup of Gold.

	trivial:	Jun 16th, 2010 at 22:05 GMT		5 points
	NYCub: I think "Andromeda Strain" was the first book Crichton published using his own name.

	dr_stalker:	Jun 16th, 2010 at 22:12 GMT		9 points
	Great idea. As constructive criticism, I think the quiz title would work better as first "novel" or "book" [and excising any that don't qualify as a "book"] rather than "major work." "Major" is subjective and many of these writers (King, Dickens, Orwell for three examples) were publishing "works" prior to the ones listed.

	caramba:	Jun 16th, 2010 at 22:33 GMT		5 points
	Regarding Rowling as a bonus, sometimes when a quiz is being prepared for publication by the editors, they decide that some answers in the contributed game don't really "fit" the finished version, but they leave them in as bonuses. I have had this happen on some of my quizzes and I appreciate that my original answers are still "there".

	segacs:	Jun 16th, 2010 at 22:37 GMT		7 points
	I find it sad that more than four times as many people guessed Stephenie Meyer than George Orwell. Sigh.

	Fidelio:	Jun 16th, 2010 at 22:45 GMT		22 points
	Well, the fact that Meyer's first work is her best known and Orwell's is one of his least known probably has something to do with that.

	sporcloid:	Jun 16th, 2010 at 23:06 GMT		0 points
	Sad, but true. Personally, I think it's definitely among Orwell's best work, though. For this book in particular, his writing style is so vivid that readers should have no problem imagining themselves next to him in the spike or the kitchen. Every college-level Creative Writing course should at least use excerpts from Down and Out in Paris and London as required reading.

	MovieDynamic:	Jun 17th, 2010 at 00:09 GMT		5 points
	Spammo: -1 points for using my name in vain.

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	JuliannasGaGa:	Jun 17th, 2010 at 00:57 GMT		8 points
	I think you should have to guess specific on this quiz. I never heard of Grimus or Torrents of Spring or This Side of Paradise but I got all those because I figured "hey it's an author quiz, I'll just guess Hemingway and Fitzgerald and Rushdie."

	Rayavi:	Jun 17th, 2010 at 01:22 GMT		14 points
	Stephenie Meyer? Playing kind of fast and loose with the term "author," aren't we?

	H0limkill:	Jun 17th, 2010 at 01:28 GMT		5 points
	No Tolkien =(

	ktappe:	Jun 17th, 2010 at 02:14 GMT		2 points
	@caramba: OK, I'll indulge you. I'm not proud I missed Twilight, but I'm sure not sad about it either. What irks me is that 58% got Twilight but only 40% got HHGTTG. Many more people need to be reading Douglas Adams. :-)

	chikka2:	Jun 17th, 2010 at 03:54 GMT		2 points
	Sometimes an author's style is so identifiable it shows up even in the titles of early works; I got Hemingway and Seuss that way. Enjoyable quiz

	AJAX22:	Jun 17th, 2010 at 04:04 GMT		-4 points
	@Caramba: That makes sense but I doubt this is getting published any time soon.

	NYCub:	Jun 17th, 2010 at 05:37 GMT		0 points
	@trivial It's true that Crichton originally published his earlier works using a pen name; however, they have since been reissued with his name. And regardless of the name used, they were still his works.

	mestdi:	Jun 17th, 2010 at 07:29 GMT		2 points
	I think the hardest bit of this was spelling Crichton. I always forget.

	JaxBored:	Jun 17th, 2010 at 09:42 GMT		2 points
	'The Andromeda Strain' was Michael Crichton's first best seller and his first book published using his real name. The first book he wrote was called 'Odds On' under the pseudonym John Lange. One of eight books he wrote using that pen name. He also used the name Jeffrey Hudson for one book and for another, Michael Douglas (a combination of his and his brother's names since they wrote the book together). Sorry, I'm a Crichton nerd, but he's a great author.

	Tommy_C:	Jun 17th, 2010 at 14:07 GMT		2 points
	Only 40% got Dr. Seuss? What did you people read when you were kids?

	cocky:	Jun 17th, 2010 at 15:46 GMT		1 point
	Harper Lee should be on here, for no oither reason than her first book was her only book.

	lexmith:	Jun 17th, 2010 at 19:41 GMT		0 points
	It probably sounds contrived, but I haven't even heard of either Twilight or Stephenie Meyer. And from the comments I don't know whether I should make the effort to.