From Bleak House to Wuthering Heights, from Against Nature to Hard Times, the writers of the nineteenth century didn't shy away from the darker aspects of the human experience. If misery is your thing and you know that the glass is always half empty, you might do well in this horrible little quiz.
1. Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens opens with a scene on the Thames where we find Gaffer Hexam working. What is his job?
2. In The Life of Charlotte Brontë by Elizabeth Gaskell we learn much about the miserable lives of the Brontë sisters, made more miserable by their brother. What was his name?
3. In Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment, we meet Raskolnikov who believes he could be the next Napoleon if given the chance. What course of action does he take to improve his lot?
4. George Eliot is famous for her masterpiece Middlemarch, but her little gem Silas Marner is not to be missed. When we meet him, Silas is a what?
5. The line - Beauty is a form of Genius—is higher, indeed, than Genius, as it needs no explanation - appears in which of these novels?
6. New Grub Street by George Gissing, like Balzac's Lost Illusions, focuses on the lives of the lowest of the low in society. What do these miserable outsiders claim to be?
7. A quiz about miserable literature wouldn't be complete without Les Misérables. Who is the most annoying character in Les Misérables?
8. In the memorable opening scene of Thomas Hardy's The Mayor of Casterbridge what does Michael Henchard sell at a country fair?
9. Jane Austen's novels are far from miserable (unless you're forced to read them at school by an unenthusiastic teacher, then they're all miserable) but when we meet Anne Elliot in Persuasion she is quietly miserable. Why?
10. Women suffer terribly in nineteenth century fiction. Which of these eponymous heroines survives to suffer a fate worse than death?
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