Frankenstein Trivia
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
7correct to beat the crowd
108 free Frankenstein trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
52 free Frankenstein trivia questions with answers. Frankenstein is two stories at once: the 1818 novel a teenage Mary Shelley dreamed up during a rainy summer on Lake Geneva, and the flat-headed, bolt-necked monster that James Whale and Boris Karloff gave the world in 1931. This quiz covers both, plus the Bride, the Hammer films, Mel Brooks, Kenneth Branagh and Guillermo del Toro. The easy questions ask who wrote the book, who played the monster and what the villagers burn down. The harder ones get into the novel itself: where Victor studies, what the Creature reads, who Walton is, and why the 1831 edition is not quite the same book as the 1818 one. Expect a few surprises about how much of the 'Frankenstein' everyone pictures was invented by the movies. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the novel, its author and the individual films, and each question carries the sentence that backs it up.
30 of 108 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What is the novel's subtitle?
The Modern Prometheus
The Modern Prometheus is the subtitle: in Greek myth Prometheus stole fire from the gods to give life to mankind, as Victor steals the secret of life.
Q 02In what year was Frankenstein first published?
1818
Frankenstein was first published in 1818: the three-volume first edition appeared anonymously in London on 1 January of that year.
Q 03How old was the author when the novel was published?
20
Mary Shelley was 20 when Frankenstein was published; born 30 August 1797, she had begun the story at 18 during the summer of 1816.
Q 04In which English city was the author lodging when she wrote much of the book?
Bath
Bath: from September 1816 Mary lodged at 5 Abbey Churchyard and wrote much of the novel there, finishing it at Marlow in spring 1817.
Q 05Who suggested that the group at Villa Diodati each write a ghost story?
Lord Byron
Lord Byron proposed the contest on a rainy June night in 1816 after the group read ghost stories aloud; Mary's entry grew into Frankenstein.
Q 06The gloomy summer of 1816 that kept the group indoors was caused by the eruption of which volcano?
Mount Tambora
Mount Tambora in Indonesia erupted in April 1815, the largest eruption in recorded history; its ash cooled 1816 into the Year Without a Summer.
Q 07Villa Diodati, where the story was conceived, overlooks which body of water?
Lake Geneva
Villa Diodati stands at Cologny on the shore of Lake Geneva; the poet hosting the party rented it for the summer of 1816.
Q 08Which book of German ghost stories, read aloud in French translation, entertained the group at the villa?
Fantasmagoriana
Fantasmagoriana, an 1812 French anthology of German ghost stories, was read aloud at the villa and prompted the ghost-story contest.
Q 09Which other landmark horror tale grew out of the same 1816 gathering?
The Vampyre
The Vampyre, John Polidori's 1819 tale of the aristocratic Lord Ruthven, grew from his host's abandoned fragment and founded the romantic vampire genre.
Q 10Who wrote the preface to the anonymous first edition?
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote the 1817 preface in the author's voice, which led many early readers to assume the anonymous novel was his.
Q 11How many copies were printed of the first edition?
500
Just 500 copies were printed, in three volumes, the standard 'triple-decker' format of the day, by a small London publisher.
Q 12The author's mother, who died days after her birth, was which pioneering feminist writer?
Mary Wollstonecraft
Mary Wollstonecraft, author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), died of septicaemia eleven days after giving birth to Mary.
Q 13The author's father, to whom the book is dedicated, was which philosopher and novelist?
William Godwin
William Godwin, author of Political Justice and the novel Caleb Williams, was Mary's father; the first edition carried a dedication to him.
Q 21What does the Creature say he will do after his maker dies at the end of the novel?
Burn himself on a pyre
He vows to burn himself on a pyre: 'I shall collect my funeral pile and consume to ashes this miserable frame', then vanishes onto the ice.
Q 22Which of these details of the Creature's creation comes from the 1931 film, not the novel?
A jolt of electricity
A jolt of electricity is the film's invention: Shelley keeps the method vague, saying only that Victor 'infused a spark of being' after two years of work.
Q 23The 1831 revised edition changed Elizabeth from the scientist's cousin into what?
An orphan
Q 14At which university does the scientist study and build the Creature?
Ingolstadt
Victor studies at the University of Ingolstadt in Bavaria, where Professor Waldman's chemistry lectures set him on the path to the secret of life.
Q 15The Frankenstein family belongs to which city, where much of the novel takes place?
Geneva
The Frankensteins are a distinguished family of Geneva; Victor opens his narrative 'I am by birth a Genevese', and the family house stands at Belrive on the lake.
Q 16Which epic poem does the Creature find and read, later comparing himself to its fallen angel?
Paradise Lost
Paradise Lost, Milton's epic, is among the books the Creature finds; he tells Victor, 'I ought to be thy Adam, but I am rather the fallen angel.'
Q 17Where does the Creature confront his maker to tell his story and ask for a mate?
On the Mer de Glace
On the Mer de Glace, the glacier above Chamonix in the Mont Blanc massif, which Mary Shelley had herself visited in July 1816.
Q 18In the novel, where does the scientist build, then destroy, the female creature?
The Orkney Islands
On one of the remotest of the Orkney Islands, in a two-room hut, Victor assembles the female before tearing the unfinished body apart.
Q 19Whom does the Creature kill on Victor's wedding night?
His bride Elizabeth
His bride Elizabeth is strangled in their room at the inn at Evian; the Creature had warned, 'I shall be with you on your wedding-night.'
Q 20Who is the ship's captain whose letters frame the whole novel?
Robert Walton
Robert Walton, captain of a ship bound for the North Pole, writes the letters to his sister Margaret that frame the story; he pulls the dying Victor from the ice.
An orphan: in the 1831 text Elizabeth is a foundling, the daughter of a Milanese nobleman, adopted by the Frankensteins rather than born Victor's cousin.
Q 24Which famous novelist praised the book in Blackwood's as an 'extraordinary tale'?
Walter Scott
Walter Scott, reviewing it in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, found 'uncommon powers of poetic imagination'; Mary wrote to thank him and correct his guess at the authorship.
Q 25The first stage adaptation, Presumption, was performed in London in which year?
1823
Mary Shelley went to see it and wrote 'lo & behold! I found myself famous!'
Q 26Which sci-fi writer argued Frankenstein is the first true science-fiction story?
Brian Aldiss
Brian Aldiss made the case in Billion Year Spree (1973): Victor 'makes a deliberate decision' and turns to laboratory experiment rather than magic.
Q 27Who directed the 1931 film Frankenstein?
James Whale
James Whale, fresh from directing Journey's End, took over the project from Robert Florey in 1931 and went on to make Bride of Frankenstein.
Q 28Who played the Monster in the 1931 film?
Boris Karloff
Boris Karloff, then a little-known 43-year-old character actor, played the Monster; the opening credits billed the role only as '?'.
Q 29Which actor plays the scientist in the 1931 film?
Colin Clive
Colin Clive plays the scientist, renamed Henry in the film; his friend Victor Moritz is John Boles and Edward Van Sloan is Dr Waldman.
Q 30Which studio produced the 1931 film?
Universal
Universal Pictures made it under Carl Laemmle Jr.; the profit from Dracula earlier in 1931 persuaded the studio to pursue more horror films.