What is the source of the title The Catcher in the Rye (1951)?

The source of the title The Catcher in the Rye is a reference to Robert Burns’s poem “Comin’ Through the Rye” (1792), which Holden Caulfield quotes.

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Where was novelist Jamaica Kincaid born?

Novelist Jamaica Kincaid was born in St. John’s, Antigua, in the West Indies, in 1949.

Her given name is Elaine Potter Richardson.

St. John’s, Antigua, in the West Indies, in 1949. Her given name is Elaine Potter Richardson.

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What fantasy opens James Thurber’s short story “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” (1942)?

In James Thurber’s short story “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty”, mild-mannered Walter Mitty imagines that he is a Navy hydroplane commander flying through a howling storm.

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Who is Finnegan in Finnegans Wake (1939)?

Finnegan in Finnegans Wake is an Irish hod carrier who dies after a fall.

At his wake, he is momentarily returned to life at the mention of the word “whiskey.”

The name also refers to legendary Irish hero Finn MacCool, who is supposed to “wake again” someday to save Ireland.

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What did Zora Neale Hurston do before becoming a novelist?

Zora Neale Hurston was a folklorist who studied with anthropologist Franz Boas at Barnard College before becoming a novelist.

In Mules and Men (1935) and Tell My Horse (1938), she compiled black traditions of the South and the Caribbean.

Her novels include Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937).

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How many sequels to I, Claudius (1934) did Robert Graves write?

Robert Graves wrote one sequel to I, Claudius, Claudius the God, published in 1934.

It charts Claudius’s rule from 41 A.D. until his poisoning by his wife Agrippina in 54 A.D.

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Which came first, 1984 or Brave New World?

Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World was published in 1932, George Orwell’s 1984 in 1949.

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Did Zelda Fitzgerald write any novels?

Zelda Fitzgerald wrote one novel, Save Me the Waltz (1932).

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What does Virginia Woolf mean by “a room of one’s own”?

In the 1928 essay “a room of one’s own”, it refers to the space a woman needs to write fiction.

Specifically, Woolf says that a woman needs two things to be able to write: “money and a room of her own.”

The essay was drawn from two papers Woolf gave at the Arts Society at Newnham and the Odtaa at Girton in 1928 on the subject of women and fiction.

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In Don Marquis’s “archy and mehitabel” stories, which is the cockroach and which the cat?

In Don Marquis’s “archy and mehitabel” stories, Archy is the cockroach, Mehitabel the cat.

Archy was said to have written the stories at night on newspaper columnist Marquis’s typewriter.

He wrote without capitals because he couldn’t reach the shift key. The stories were first collected in archy and mehitabel (1927).

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