Sunday Quiz | Easy like Sunday morning — Feb. 7, 2021
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Born on February 7, 1812, Charles Dickens is one of the most popular and most loved Victorian authors. When he was 12 years old, his father was arrested for his debts and Charles was forced to work at Warren’s Blacking Factory, where he earned six shillings a week. This experience was the inspiration for his writings about poor social conditions, which became known as ‘Dickensian’. As a ‘Blacker’ what did Dickens work with that comprised Naphtha, turpentine and nigrosine?
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Born on February 7, 1812, Charles Dickens is one of the most popular and most loved Victorian authors. When he was 12 years old, his father was arrested for his debts and Charles was forced to work at Warren’s Blacking Factory, where he earned six shillings a week. This experience was the inspiration for his writings about poor social conditions, which became known as ‘Dickensian’. As a ‘Blacker’ what did Dickens work with that comprised Naphtha, turpentine and nigrosine?
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Some of Dickens’s most popular novels such as David Copperfield and Oliver Twist were initially written to be published in instalments for either monthly or weekly magazines. This meant that Dickens had to ensure that the reader kept looking forward to the next episode. This led to him perfecting the art of a plot device that left the reader in suspense. What plot device was this that we now refer to using a geographical expression?
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Dickens owned a beloved pet named ‘Grip’, which even makes an appearance in one of his novels. When that pet died after eating lead paint chips, he replaced it with another, which he also named ‘Grip’. This particular pet is supposedly the inspiration for one of the most famous poems by Edgar Allan Poe. What pet did Dickens have that you’d associate more with Poe and musician Steven Wilson?
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When Dickens was working as an editor at a magazine, he made it known that his earliest muse was a fairytale character. He wrote, “She was my first love, I felt that if I could have married (her), I should have known perfect bliss. But, it was not to be.” Who is this character who we know by her fondness for a certain colour and her encounter with a big bad canine?
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Charles Dickens, Arthur Conan Doyle and William Butler Yeats were all part of a research organisation that was founded in 1862. This club was started in Cambridge after a discussion on psychic phenomena. The club was dissolved following the death of Dickens in 1870 and was revived in 1882. What is the name of the club, which sounds more like a kids’ Halloween party?
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Dickens was a prodigious wordsmith responsible for giving the English language many words and phrases. He popularised the words ‘butter-fingers’, ‘the creeps’, ‘abuzz’ and ‘boredom’. One way that Dickens devised new words was by adding suffixes to old ones, such as adding ‘-iness’ to make nouns. One of these words he invented means ‘the quality of being light and full of air like wool’. What is this word that you might use to describe a baby rabbit, for instance?
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The works of Dickens are known for his characteristic wit and humour even when dealing with serious social issues. Only one of his works strays away from this and is a grim depiction of life in one of his favourite cities. This is also one of only two historical novels he wrote, the other being Barnaby Rudge. What novel is this which begins with the iconic lines, ‘It was the best of times, it was the worst of times’?
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The Little Ice Age is a climate interval that occurred between the 16th and 19th centuries when mountain glaciers expanded at several locations, including the European Alps. This led to a dramatic climatic shift in England as well. One of the effects was that, beginning the year Dickens was born, London had a very surprising eight years of Christmases with a certain weather pattern. This childhood memory shaped Dickens’s writing and that’s why this particular weather is a constant presence in his Christmas stories. What happened for eight years because of the Little Ice Age?
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The phrase ‘What the Dickens?’ is a euphemism for conjuring the devil and has nothing to do with Charles Dickens. In fact the first written record of this phrase predates Dickens by more than 200 years. It comes in a play where a character says ‘I cannot tell what the dickens his name is’. Who was the playwright who was the first to mention ‘the dickens’ in the 1590s?