What Do You Know About Poe? A Big Read Quiz
It's been 166 years (and two days) since his mysterious death in Baltimore, but Edgar Allan Poe is still alive and well in our collective imagination. Not surprising we suppose for a man so skilled in the spooky. In his honor, here's a Big Read quiz to test how skilled you are when it comes to Poe's work. Can you guess the short story or poem from its first line? Go ahead, try your luck. Tick tock, tick tock...
1. "It was many and many a year ago…"
2. "Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary…"
3. "Take this kiss upon the brow!..."
4. "During the whole of a chill, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country; and at length found myself, as the shade of the veining drew on within view of the melancholy House of Usher."
5. "The mental features discoursed of as the analytical are, in themselves, but little susceptible of analysis. We appreciate them only in their effects. We know of them, among other things, that they are always to their possessor,w hen inordinately possessed, a source of the liveliest enjoyment."
6. "The 'Red Death' had long devastated the country."
7. "I was sick--sick unto death with that long agony; and when they at length unbound me, and I was permitted to sit, I felt that my senses were leaving me."
8. "True!--nervous--very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will [ital] you say that I am mad?"
9. "At Paris, just after dark one gusty evening in the autumn of 18--, I was enjoying the twofold luxury of meditation and a meerschaum, in company with my friend C. Auguste Dupin, in his little back library, or book-closet, au troisieme, No. 33, Rue Dunot, Faubourg St. Germain."
10. "The thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as I best could; but when he ventured upon insult, I vowed revenge."
ANSWER KEY
1. "Annabel Lee"
2. "The Raven"
3. "A Dream within a Dream"
4. "The Fall of the House of Usher"
5. "The Murders in the Rue Morgue"
6. "The Masque of the Red Death"
7. "The Pit and the Pendulum"
8. "The Tell-Tale Heart"
9. "The Purloined Letter"
10. "The Cask of Amontillado"
