Jane Austen Trivia
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
7correct to beat the crowd
119 free Jane Austen trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Jane Austen published four novels in her lifetime, all of them anonymously, and died at 41 without ever seeing her name on a title page. This set of Jane Austen trivia questions covers the whole story: the Hampshire rectory where she read her drafts aloud to her family, the flirtation with an Irish law student, the marriage proposal she accepted for one night, the manuscript a publisher bought for ten pounds and never printed, and the eight quiet years at Chawton in which every one of the six novels was finished. The novels get their share too. You will be asked about working titles, settings, estates and plot turns from Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Emma, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion, plus the unfinished Sanditon and the early novella Lady Susan. A final run covers the afterlife: the nephew's memoir, the Janeites, the Bank of England note and the films from Clueless to Emma. and Persuasion. The questions range from easy to genuinely hard, so it works for a book club, a classroom or a Regency-themed quiz night. Every answer has been checked against a primary or encyclopaedic source, and the explanations add a detail you can use to win the argument afterwards.
30 of 119 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In which English county was Jane Austen born in December 1775?
Hampshire
Hampshire: she was born in the village of Steventon and lived there until she was 25, drafting the first versions of three of her novels before the family moved away.
Q 02What was the occupation of Jane Austen's father, George Austen?
Anglican rector
Anglican rector: George Austen topped up a modest clerical income by farming and by taking in three or four boys at a time as boarding pupils.
Q 03Austen's father and two of her brothers all studied at which university?
Oxford
Oxford: at St John's College her eldest brother James launched a humorous weekly, The Loiterer, kept it going for over a year, and in later life spoke slightingly of it.
Q 04Which sibling was Jane Austen's only sister and lifelong closest companion?
Cassandra
Cassandra burned most of Jane's letters to her in old age and left the rest to relations; the family put it down to a dread of publicity, though scholars still debate why.
Q 05Which disease nearly killed the young Jane Austen in 1783 at school in Southampton?
Typhus
Typhus swept through Southampton that autumn: both sisters caught it and were fetched home, and Jane, who nearly died, was taught at home for more than a year afterwards.
Q 06Which young Irish visitor flirted with the 20-year-old Austen in 1795-96, as recorded in her earliest letters?
Tom Lefroy
Tom Lefroy was sent away by his family at the end of January 1796, since neither of them had money to marry on, and she never saw him again; the 2007 film Becoming Jane is built on the episode.
Q 07The Irish law student Austen flirted with in her early twenties went on to hold which high office?
Lord Chief Justice of Ireland
Lord Chief Justice of Ireland from 1852, he refused to step down until he was 90, and in old age he told a nephew he had been in love with Austen, though he called it a 'boyish love'.
Q 08Whose December 1802 marriage proposal did Austen accept, then withdraw from the next morning?
Harris Bigg-Wither
Harris Bigg-Wither, six years her junior, was heir to large estates near her childhood home; the match would have secured her family's future, and she still thought better of it overnight.
Q 09In 1801 the Austen family left Steventon and moved to which fashionable city?
Bath
Bath: her father retired there suddenly, and his death in 1805 left his widow and daughters so short of money that her brothers clubbed together to support them.
Q 10Which brother offered Austen's mother and sisters the Chawton cottage in 1809?
Edward
Edward had been adopted by wealthy, childless cousins, the Knights, and inherited their estates, later taking their surname; the cottage stood on his Chawton estate.
Q 11Austen's brothers Francis and Charles both made their careers in which service?
The Royal Navy
The Royal Navy made admirals of both brothers; Francis, a flag-captain in Nelson's fleet, was sent off on supply and convoy duty in autumn 1805 and so missed Trafalgar.
Q 12In Pride and Prejudice, which pompous clergyman proposes to Elizabeth Bennet and, once refused, to her friend Charlotte Lucas?
Mr Collins
Mr Collins makes what Elizabeth calls 'two offers of marriage within three days'; Charlotte accepts because, as she says, she is 'not romantic' and asks 'only a comfortable home'.
Q 13In Emma, which young man flirts with the heroine while secretly engaged to Jane Fairfax?
Frank Churchill
Q 21Where was Austen buried after her death in July 1817, aged 41?
Winchester Cathedral
Winchester Cathedral: she had moved into lodgings in College Street, a short walk away, to be near her doctor, and died there eight weeks later with her sister beside her.
Q 22Austen's gravestone never mentions her novels, but praises 'the extraordinary endowments' of her what?
Mind
Mind is as close as the stone comes to her books. A brass tablet added later finally called her 'known to many by her writings'.
Q 23Whose Biographical Notice, published with her last two novels in 1817, first publicly named Austen as author?
Her brother Henry
Frank Churchill dashes off to London 'merely to have his hair cut'; soon afterwards a pianoforte arrives for Jane from a nameless giver, and he later owns up to ordering it.
Q 14Instead of Austen's name, what appeared on the title page of Sense and Sensibility in 1811?
By a Lady
By a Lady: her sister wrote to relatives begging them not to mention who the lady was, and each later novel was credited only to the author of the earlier ones.
Q 15Which 1996 novel borrows its plot from Pride and Prejudice, right down to a hero called Mark Darcy?
Bridget Jones's Diary
Bridget Jones's Diary grew out of Helen Fielding's newspaper column; the 1995 BBC serial inspired her hero, and its Mr Darcy, Colin Firth, went on to play Mark Darcy on film.
Q 16In 1815 Austen moved from Egerton to which better-known London publisher, who brought out Emma?
John Murray
John Murray, who was also Lord Byron's publisher, brought out Emma, and it sold well, but her losses on his second edition of Mansfield Park ate up most of the profit.
Q 17Emma was dedicated, after a heavy hint from court, to which royal whom Austen privately disliked?
The Prince Regent
The Prince Regent kept a set of her novels in each of his residences; she had written 'I hate her husband' when taking his wife's side in 1813, but the hint was hard to refuse.
Q 18Austen told a court librarian she could write which kind of book only 'to save my life'?
A historical romance
A historical romance on the House of Saxe-Coburg was James Stanier Clarke's idea; she said she would be hung before finishing chapter one if she could never laugh, then spoofed his hints in Plan of a Novel.
Q 19Which famous writer anonymously reviewed Emma, praising Austen's art of copying from nature?
Sir Walter Scott
Sir Walter Scott wrote the unsigned Quarterly Review piece; Austen had earlier joked that he had 'no business to write novels, especially good ones', having fame and profit enough as a poet.
Q 20Which illness do most biographers, following a 1964 diagnosis, blame for Austen's death at 41?
Addison's disease
Addison's disease is a diagnosis made 147 years after the event, and Hodgkin's lymphoma has been argued since; she herself made light of it all as bile and rheumatism.
Her brother Henry had long been her go-between with publishers; a militia officer turned banker, he saw his bank fail in 1816 and afterwards took holy orders.
Q 24Austen likened her own writing to painting with a fine brush on a little bit, 'two inches wide', of what?
Ivory
Ivory was what miniature portraits were painted on; in an 1816 letter she set her 'little bit' against a nephew's 'strong, manly' sketches and joked that it produced 'little effect after much labour'.
Q 25Under what working title did Austen originally write the novel that became Pride and Prejudice?
First Impressions
First Impressions was offered to a London publisher by her father in November 1797, sight unseen; the proposal was declined by return of post, and the book waited until 1813.
Q 26Sense and Sensibility began life as an epistolary novel under which working title?
Elinor and Marianne
Elinor and Marianne was told in letters and read aloud to the family; how it worked is a puzzle, since in the finished novel the two sisters are never apart for a single day.
Q 27In Persuasion, whose advice led the 19-year-old Anne Elliot to break off her first engagement?
Lady Russell
Lady Russell, a second mother to Anne, thought a young man with 'nothing but himself to recommend him' a throwing away; Anne gave way and paid with more than seven years of lost bloom and spirits.
Q 28Which unfinished Austen novel, begun in 1817 as The Brothers, is set in a would-be health resort?
Sanditon
Sanditon runs to twelve chapters, written between January and mid-March 1817; she filled it with comic hypochondriacs while her own health was failing, and in 2019 the fragment was spun out into a TV drama.
Q 29In Pride and Prejudice, which haughty aunt of Mr Darcy descends on Elizabeth to demand she promise never to marry him?
Lady Catherine
Lady Catherine's visit backfires: Elizabeth refuses to promise, and when the aunt reports this to her nephew it is exactly what, in his words, 'taught me to hope'.
Q 30Which relative published the 1869 memoir that created the image of dear aunt Jane?
Her nephew James Edward Austen-Leigh
Her nephew James Edward Austen-Leigh had been the youngest mourner at her funeral; over fifty years on, in old age, he gathered his own and his sisters' memories before the last people who knew her were gone.