About This Edition
What this site is, where the text comes from, and how to cite it.
The Book
Curious Questions in History, Literature, Art and Social Life was compiled by Sarah Hutchins Killikelly and first published in 1886. Across three volumes she gathered 709 little histories — why a queen was crowned after death, what battle was fought over a bucket, who the real prisoner of Chillon was — the trivia book of the Victorian parlor, each answer a story worth the telling. She closed her first volume with an appendix of 155 questions “for future classes,” preserved here as the Question Book.
This Edition
This site reproduces the complete text of all three volumes, digitized page by page from the original printing. Nothing has been abridged, modernized or cleaned up: the period spelling, punctuation and opinions all stand exactly as printed. Beyond the book itself, the site adds only navigation — the ten cabinets, a search box, and each entry’s volume marking.
Editorial Policy
The book’s own words are never altered. Where we add anything of our own — context or a caution about dated language — it appears as a clearly marked 2026 Editor’s Note, signed and dated, set apart from the original text. A book of the 1880s occasionally reflects the attitudes of the 1880s; those passages are preserved unchanged as part of the historical record, with a note where one is warranted.
Citing This Edition
The underlying work is in the public domain and may be quoted, taught from and reused freely — see Rights & Reuse below.