I have often wondered whether older books of general knowledge and quiz books were designed to inform and test their readers or to highlight the apparently superior intellect of the writer or compiler. Certainly Hubert Phillips's contribution, Who Wrote That?, succeeds in making me feel tantamount to illiterate and while I would like to think that his quiz, "containing 400 well-known and not quite so well-known quotations" is merely difficult because times and tastes in writers change, I fear another response may be the more plausible.
Who Wrote That? is, or was a Penguin yellow-back original published in 1948 and numbered PT5. The author whose somewhat self-satisfied photograph adorns the back cover is described (or self-described) as, "one of the most versatile, as well as one of the most knowledgeable, of contemporary journalists." As well as serving as bridge editor, crossword writer and quondam principal leader writer of the News Chronicle we are informed he had also been Head of the Economics Department in Bristol University and 'Theme Convener of the Lion and Unicorn Pavilion at the Festival of Britain Exhibition' (I assume the 1924/5 Wembley one). Wikipedia sees him as primarily a bridge player.
So to the quiz itself. Who, for example, wrote, "For all sad words of tongue or pen, The Saddest are these: 'It might have been'." The answer, is John Greenleaf Whittier in something called Maud Muller. Hmm.
Or how about, "The worth of a State, in the long run, is the worth of the individuals composing it." That's John Stuart Mill in Liberty. Fair enough.
Or again, "We carry within us the wonders, we seek without us. There is all Africa, and her prodigies in us." That's Sir Thomas Browne in Religio Medici. I'm not convinced I even know what this means.
Well I suppose I might have got the Mill quotation but if you knew the other two, "You're a better man than I am, Gunga Din". (That's Kipling, by the way).
Who Wrote That? Published by Penguin, 1948. 148pp.
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