Fever 1793
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50 free Fever 1793 trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Fever 1793 is a staple of middle school reading lists, and it is easy to see why. In a single summer and autumn, fourteen-year-old Mattie Cook goes from dodging chores at her family's Philadelphia coffeehouse to fighting for her life as an epidemic empties the city around her. This quiz follows the whole story. Early questions cover the Cook household, the first cases and Mattie's flight from the city; later ones take in the hospital, the looted coffeehouse, the friends who take her in and the closing chapters through the epilogue. A handful step outside the novel to the real doctors, volunteers and politicians of the 1793 outbreak. It suits students revising for a class test, teachers who want a ready-made chapter check, and anyone who read the book years ago and wants to see how much stuck. Every answer comes with a brief explanation, so you learn something even when you miss.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which insect, buzzing in Mattie Cook's ear as Fever 1793 opens, actually spread the epidemic?
Mosquito
Mosquito bites carried the virus, but nobody in 1793 knew it; doctors blamed bad air, and the insect's role was not confirmed for about another century.
Q 02In Fever 1793, whose return to Philadelphia shows Mattie Cook the epidemic is over?
George Washington
George Washington comes down High Street in November with wagons of returning families behind him, and in one of them Mattie spots her missing mother.
Q 03In Fever 1793, what change in the weather does Mattie Cook wait for to end the epidemic?
The first frost
The first frost arrives in late October, and Mattie and Eliza carry the sick children outside into the cold air, where they quickly begin to recover.
Q 04Which serving girl at the Cook coffeehouse is the first person Mattie knows to die in Fever 1793?
Polly
Polly had been Mattie's childhood playmate, yet Mattie's mother forbids her to go to the funeral for fear she will catch the sickness too.
Q 05What kind of pet belongs to Mattie's grandfather, the old Revolutionary War captain, in Fever 1793?
A parrot
A parrot named King George is the old soldier's companion, and the squawking bird follows Mattie all the way to a stream when she goes looking for water.
Q 06What weapon does Mattie Cook seize to drive a thief out of the family coffeehouse in Fever 1793?
Grandfather's sword
Grandfather's sword hangs over the mantel until a burglar pulls it down; Mattie slashes his shoulder with it, but the struggle has already cost the old man his life.
Q 07Which European capital does Mattie Cook dream of visiting in Fever 1793 to buy fabrics to sell?
Paris
Paris stands for everything Mattie wants beyond the coffeehouse; she even decides that the lemons at the market must smell exactly like the French city.
Q 08Which treatment does Dr. Kerr use on Mattie's mother after diagnosing yellow fever in Fever 1793?
Bloodletting
Bloodletting was a standard cure of the day: the Scottish doctor drains ten ounces from her and promises to come back the next day for ten more.
Q 09Which author read the diaries of Philadelphia's epidemic survivors while researching Fever 1793?
Laurie Halse Anderson
Laurie Halse Anderson published the novel in 2000 and saw it become a Publishers Weekly bestseller; she compared the research to digging at an archaeological site.
Q 10In Fever 1793, how is Mattie Cook's unconscious mother brought home when the sickness strikes her?
In a wheelbarrow
In a wheelbarrow, pushed by a stranger who tips her out in the street; Mattie and her grandfather see it happen as they walk home from the print shop.
Q 11To which mansion turned fever hospital does Grandfather carry the sick Mattie in Fever 1793?
Bush Hill
Bush Hill had a bad reputation until new management set it right; its French doctors prescribed bed rest and food rather than the harsh purges used in the city.
Q 12What does Mattie Cook offer Eliza at the thanksgiving feast near the end of Fever 1793?
A business partnership
A business partnership makes the former cook co-owner of the reopened coffeehouse; she hesitates at first, and Mother Smith has to prod her into saying yes.
Q 13In Fever 1793, what news does each tolling of Philadelphia's church bells carry across the city?
Another death
Q 21What did Mattie and Nathaniel watch the Frenchman Blanchard launch over Philadelphia in early 1793?
A balloon
A balloon carried Blanchard up from the yard of the Walnut Street Jail on America's first untethered manned flight, and Mattie daydreams of floating away like it.
Q 22What gift does Nathaniel Benson send Mattie Cook just before she flees Philadelphia in Fever 1793?
A painting of flowers
A painting of flowers arrives at the coffeehouse with a note, and Mattie holds on to it, pulling it out again weeks later while she nurses three sick children.
Q 23Which family friends own the country farm where Mattie's mother wants to send her in Fever 1793?
The Ludingtons
Another death is what every toll announces, and the bells ring so often that they cut short Nathaniel's invitation to take Mattie fishing.
Q 14Which genre label fits Fever 1793, as it does its author's later Seeds of America trilogy?
Historical fiction
Historical fiction blends real and invented: the fever, the hospital and its French doctor existed, while Mattie, Eliza and the coffeehouse are made up.
Q 15In Fever 1793, with whom has the wealthy Colette Ogilvie secretly eloped, as her fever reveals?
Her French tutor
Her French tutor turned out to be her secret husband, news that scandalised her mother and enraged her sister, who was in love with him too.
Q 16How did Mattie Cook's father die, only two months after he finished building the family coffeehouse?
He fell off a ladder
He fell off a ladder and broke his neck when Mattie was four; the carpenter never saw his coffeehouse thrive, and his own father moved in to help run it.
Q 17In Fever 1793, how did Eliza, the coffeehouse cook born into slavery in Virginia, become free?
Her husband bought her freedom
Her husband bought her freedom with money saved from shoeing horses, and she came to Philadelphia to earn enough to free him in turn before a runaway horse killed him.
Q 18Which Black mutual-aid group does Eliza work with in Fever 1793 to nurse Philadelphia's sick?
Free African Society
Free African Society members nursed the sick and carried away the dead when thousands of Philadelphians fled; the group had been founded in the city in 1787.
Q 19Which piece of her clothing does a hungry Mattie Cook turn into a fishing net in Fever 1793?
Her petticoat
Her petticoat makes a clumsy net: she topples into the stream and trudges back to her grandfather with water but not a single fish.
Q 20To which real Philadelphia portrait painter is Nathaniel Benson apprenticed in Fever 1793?
Charles Willson Peale
Charles Willson Peale also ran one of America's first museums in Philadelphia, and his family of painters is remembered as the First Family of American Art.
The Ludingtons' farm holds no appeal for Mattie, who dreads the hard labor there, and at first her grandfather also objects to sending her away.
Q 24What happens to Mattie and her grandfather when guards near Pembroke suspect him of having fever?
They are left by the road
They are left by the road when the farmer driving their wagon throws them off and rolls on with his own family; the old man's ill-timed coughing fit did the damage.
Q 25Which nurse tends Mattie at the fever hospital in Fever 1793 and flirts with her grandfather?
Mrs. Flagg
Mrs. Flagg nurses Mattie back to health, and the old captain is so taken with her that he promises to take her dancing.
Q 26Where is the Cook family's strongbox hidden, keeping its money safe from looters in Fever 1793?
Inside a hollow stair
Inside a hollow stair the box sits untouched, even though intruders have ransacked the coffeehouse and stolen every scrap of its food.
Q 27What does Mattie Cook demand before gravediggers bury her grandfather in a mass grave in Fever 1793?
A prayer for him
A prayer for him is all she can give, so Mattie stops the men and reads from the Psalms herself beside the open grave.
Q 28What is the little girl Nell clutching when Mattie finds her alone in a doorway in Fever 1793?
A broken doll
A broken doll is all Nell has left now that the fever has killed her mother, and Mattie, alone herself, decides to take the child with her.
Q 29In the epilogue of Fever 1793, what does Mattie Cook sit on the front steps to watch?
The sunrise
The sunrise finds her up before anyone else, fire lit and breakfast laid out, a reversal of the opening, when her mother had to shout her out of bed.
Q 30Why can Mattie Cook's mother no longer run the coffeehouse after she returns in Fever 1793?
Illness left her too weak
Illness left her too weak after a relapse kept her unconscious for weeks, so Mattie takes charge and her mother settles for minding the children.