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This test consists of 15 multiple choice questions and 5 short answer questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What did Yeats tell Gosse about Oscar Wilde's house and family?
(a) his house was small and unimposing, his family unattractive
(b) his house was forbidding, his wife and children ordinary
(c) his house, wife and children were warm, perfect and beautiful
(d) his house was ordinary, his family introverted and fearful

2. When did Henry James Senior die?
(a) three years after his wife died
(b) within a year after his wife died
(c) ten years after his wife died
(d) four years after his wife died

3. Where had Henry found some of the names he used in his novels?
(a) wedding announcements
(b) tombstones
(c) obituaries and death notices
(d) newspaper articles

4. What had happened when Henry walked with his father on the beach in Boulogne?
(a) He and his father bonded for the first time.
(b) His father watched a female bather too intensely.
(c) Henry fell in love with the city of Boulogne.
(d) Henry saved a drowning girl.

5. What was Symonds's wife like?
(a) a fiery Italian beauty
(b) a romantic, adoring wife
(c) a narrow, cold, Calvinistic, dull woman
(d) a dutiful, domestic wife

6. What profession did Henry's friend, Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., have?
(a) journalist
(b) soldier
(c) physician
(d) judge

7. What was Henry's brother, William, like?
(a) He was shy and retiring
(b) He was quiet and intellectual
(c) He was a sickly boy
(d) He was exuberant, strong and popular

8. How did Henry treat the actors in his play?
(a) He ignored them.
(b) He spoiled them with hampers of food.
(c) He complemented their acting ability constantly.
(d) He criticized their acting ability.

9. What did Henry's father say that Minny took exception to?
(a) He didn't like animals.
(b) He was critical of his sons and daughter.
(c) He said women were inferior in intellect and physical strength.
(d) He was against abolition

10. What did Oscar Wilde's wife do because of the scandal and trial?
(a) denounced him in an article in the London Times
(b) committed suicide
(c) came to London to stand by him
(d) moved to Switzerland with her children and changed her name

11. With whom had Sturges met to discuss Oscar Wilde's trial?
(a) George Bernard Shaw
(b) Lady Wolseley
(c) Lord Wolseley
(d) Wilde's parents

12. Who is John Gray?
(a) a fellow novelist
(b) a man Henry fell in love with in his youth
(c) another of Minny's suitors, a military man and intellectual
(d) Henry's cousin

13. What did Henry base the story he wrote at the end of Chapter 4 on?
(a) Oscar Wilde's trial
(b) his friends, Sturges and Gosse
(c) Oscar Wilde's wife and children
(d) a couple like the Symondses and their beloved son

14. With whom did Alice develop a close friendship after her parents died?
(a) her cousin Minny
(b) Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
(c) Mrs. Charles Kingsley
(d) Katherine Loring

15. Who was Lord Houghton?
(a) an English lord who dabbled in writing
(b) lord lieutenant, representing the queen in Ireland
(c) an old friend of Henry's
(d) a distant relative of Henry's

Short Answer Questions

1. What mutual friend became the topic of conversation between Gosse and Henry after the trial?

2. Who were the children in the ghost story Henry wrote?

3. Who visits Henry in the first chapter?

4. How did the distinguished guest of the Jameses embarrass and shame Alice?

5. Who did Gosse say would produce unwashed boys to give evidence against Wilde?

(see the answer keys)

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