D. H. Lawrence showed his first novel, The White Peacock, to his coal-miner father. After struggling through half a page, the father asked, "And what dun they gie thee for that, lad?" "Fifty pounds, Father," the son answered. "Fifty pounds!" exclaimed the dumbfounded father. "Fifty pounds! An' tha's niver done a day's hard work in thy life!" Such a biographical incident we can sometimes catch and crystallize the essence of a writer's life and character. Here are some of my favorite anecdotes about authors, each of whom you are asked to identify: 1. This politically active English poet became completely blind at the age of forty-five and afterward wrote a sonnet, "On His Blindness." 2. This English Lake Poet fell asleep, perhaps under the influence of opium, and dreamt a complete vision of his most famous poem. When he awoke, he immediately set to writing out his vision but was interrupted by "a person on business from Porlock." 3. The poet Lord Byron challenged a group of his friends to create their own ghost stories. From that challenge came a classic of horror fiction, written by this twenty-one-year-old wife of another romantic poet. 4. Worn down by poverty, this unknown Scottish poet resolved to emigrate to Jamaica in 1786. To finance the journey, he gathered together some of his poems in a thin volume. The small collection took Scotland by storm, and the young man went on to become his country's national poet. 5. This London pre-Romantic poet was also a painter, engraver, and spiritual visionary. When he was but a child, he claimed to have seen the prophet Ezekiel in a tree. Years later, his wife and he sat nude in their garden reciting poetry as if they were in the Garden of Eden. His vivid engravings designed to accompany his poems made him the world's first multimedia artist. 6. When this Russian writer's first novel was well received in 1846, he joined a revolutionary group that was infiltrated by the authorities. Together with several associates, he was tried and sentenced to be shot. The execution was a cruel hoax, and, at the very last minute, the sentence was commuted to years of hard labor in Siberia. Ten years later he returned to St. Petersburg as a conservative and became one of the very greatest of all Russian authors. 7. The science-fiction stories of this French author were called "dreams come true." So prophetic was his description of a periscope that a few years later the actual inventor of the instrument was refused permission for an original patent. Answers: 1. John Milton 2. Samuel Taylor Coleridge 3. Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley 4. Robert Burns 5. William Blake 6. Fyodor Dostoevsky 7. Jules Verne

Now try the Verbivore's Challenge. The first reader to identify the authors described below will receive a $25 gift certificate to Borders Books and Music. 1. In less than nine years, this London man of letters almost single-handedly produced the first authoritative dictionary of the English language, a feat that took academy committees in France and Italy decades to accomplish. 2. A 19-month-old girl lay dying in a London hospital. Her condition baffled the doctors until a nurse noted that the patient's symptoms were remarkably like those of an infant in one of the author's detective novels. The nurse's suggestion that the patient could have thallium poisoning was confirmed by tests. Given proper treatment, the baby recovered. Identify both the author and the novel. 3. This British humor writer and several literary friends were asked one evening what book they would prefer to have with them if stranded on a desert isle. "The complete works of Shakespeare," said one writer without hesitation. "I'd choose the Bible," asserted another. "I would choose," replied our writer, "Thomas's Guide to Practical Shipbuilding." Are your answers all filled in? Then press the SUBMIT button below. This quickly sends your answers back to SALON. There is no need to press this button twice. The winner of the last Verbivore Challenge was George Hardy, who correctly guessed the following: 1. This American humorist and member of the famed Algonquin Round Table once quipped, "It took me 15 years to discover that I had no talent for writing, but I couldn't give it up because by that time I was too famous." Robert Benchley 2. When this Irish playwright was stopped by U.S. customs in New York, he proclaimed, "I have nothing to declare except my genius." Oscar Wilde 3. At the height of this British writer's popularity, he is said to have earned about a dollar a word. This inspired a certain autograph hound, who had been unsuccessful in obtaining the great man's signature, to try again. He sent off a letter that he was sure would produce the desired result: "I see you get $1 a word for your writing. I enclose a check for $1. Please send me a sample." The writer replied by postcard -- unsigned: "Thanks." Rudyard Kipling

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