It’s hard to know exactly what makes a line of verse or a sentence from a novel stick in the mind, but it’s undeniable that they often do, running through our minds like fragments of melody in a way that can be both exhilarating and annoying. Dozens of different elements go to make a bit of language memorable, or to make this or that writer’s style immediately recognisable, but there’s no easy formula for pinning down its author. Trying to remember or work out who wrote something can be frustrating as well as satisfying, but the more tantalising the process, the more satisfying it is when we find the answer. This is the premise of Nemo’s Almanac, a literary quiz that has been published every year since 1892.

This year, for the first time, Nemo’s Almanac has appeared in book form, too, in greatly expanded form, but the traditional almanac – a slender pamphlet – has been published each year for the last century with the format largely unchanged. When it started publication in 1892, the first editor, a governess called Annie E Larden, included useful facts, anniversaries, and illustrations of English scenes alongside a variety of questions that ranged from quotations to “Did Oliver Cromwell use blotting paper?”, revealing its origins in the holiday tasks she used to set her charges. Soon into the tenure of Miss Atkinson, the second editor, the questions were dropped, though her earliest issues asked: “How does Lord Bacon describe coffee?” and “What is the cuckoo said to have done for musical science?”

Written questions … some of the editions of Nemo’s Almanac.

The publication continued to be called an almanac, but the focus was firmly on literary quotations drawn, as time went on, from an increasingly conservative stock of authors. Some of them now look distinctly old-fashioned, if not entirely forgotten, such as Whyte Melville, John Greenleaf Whittier, Mrs Oliphant and Eva Scott. In recent years, it has settled down to a regular pattern of 72 quotations, plus one more on the cover. Adjectives such as “maddening”, “fiendish”, “formidable”, “elusive” and “addictive” have often been used in the press to describe the quiz, which is indeed tough. These days, we must add “self-disciplined” to that list, since recourse to the internet is strictly not allowed.

The word “quiz” once meant an eccentric person, or something ridiculous: it only developed its modern sense in the later part of the 19th century. These days, a “literary quotation quiz” may at first sight seem dated and eccentric. Now, the competitors usually go by their own names (not always, though – there is “Gli Amici” as well as “the Mossfield Gang”) – but to begin with, most of them used pseudonyms, yielding up their secret only when their wearer won a prize. “Skids” was Mrs Pledge of Epsom; “Botanist” the Countess of Mexborough. And who were Mrs Dobbs of Castle Dobbs, Co Antrim, Miss Clive Bayley of “the Wilderness, Acot”, Miss Ina Clogstone and Lady Blanc of the rue de la Pompe, Paris? Titled ladies abounded in the marks list; the first editor Mrs Larden (who had dedicated early editions of the almanac to the Duchess of Sutherland and the Duchess of Leeds) was not above preening herself on her correspondents: under the heading of “Claims to Distinction”, she pointed out that Horatia Cocles, an entrant in 1901, was “connected with Tower Bridge”.

Her successor, Miss Atkinson, remained the editor for 47 years, until 1949. She was succeeded by Lady Birkett, who improved the quality and range of the questions but saw the number of competitors fall to 12. Katherine Watson, who took on the editorship until she passed it to John Fuller in 1970, ran a bookshop in Burford, Oxfordshire. Fuller, poet and Oxford don, raised the circulation to almost 1,000 during his editorship, introducing some more recondite quotations at the same time. The urbane tenure of Alan Hollinghurst, helped by more publicity, doubled that figure, but circulation has continued to fluctuate since then under recent editors Gerard Benson, Nigel Forde – and now me.

I’m always keen to find new subscribers. Googling the answers is not allowed – and anyway would be no fun – but taking time to use the resources of books, friends, and memory has a pleasure of its own. The feeling of satisfaction when you finally track down a quotation is well worth the work.

Can you sniff out these quotations from the 2018 Nemo’s Almanac?

1. “My fear is of perishing by deliquescence. —I melt away in Nasal and Lachrymal profluvia. My remedies are warm Pediluvium, Cathartics, topical application of a watery solution of Opium to eyes, ears, and the interior of the nostrils.”

2. “So like the Nose I sing – my verse shall glow –

Like Phlegethon my verse in waves of fire shall flow!”



3. “He quickly restored his nose to its normal position and began pensively fondling his dropped chin, in the hope of being assailed by imbecilic doubt.”

4. “Everybody marvels at her nose.

It’s beautiful and slender, like her mother’s.

I, her younger sister, marvel at

the way she talks to men I do not know.”



5. “But to bite euery Motley-head vice by’th nose, you did it Ningle to play the Bug-beare Satyre, & make a Campe royall of fashion-mongers quake at your paper Bullets; you Nastie Tortois, you and your Itchy Poetry breake out like Christmas, but once a yeare.”

6. “Now, I find it needful to inform your reverences and worships, that besides the many nautical uses of long noses enumerated by Erasmus, the dialogist affirmeth that a long nose is not without its domestic conveniences also, for that in a case of distress,—and for want of a pair of bellows, it will do excellently well, ad excitandum focum, (to stir up the fire).”