Pride and Prejudice Trivia
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
7correct to beat the crowd
99 free Pride and Prejudice trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Pride and Prejudice has sold more than 20 million copies, and most of its readers can quote the first line from memory. Jane Austen wrote it in her early twenties as First Impressions, sold it for £110 fifteen years later, and produced the most re-read romance in the English language: five Bennet sisters, an entailed estate, a rich neighbour at Netherfield, and Mr Darcy at £10,000 a year. This quiz starts with the book: the plot, the money, the characters from Mr Collins to Lady Catherine de Bourgh, and the story of how it was written and published. Then it moves to the adaptations everyone argues about, from Olivier and Garson in 1940 to Colin Firth's lake, Keira Knightley's Oscar nomination, Bridget Jones, the Bollywood version, the zombies and the Emmy-winning web series. There are easy questions for people who have only seen the films and harder ones on the text and its history for people who reread it every winter. Every answer is checked against a reference source and each question links to where the fact was confirmed.
30 of 99 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In which era was Pride and Prejudice first published?
Regency
The Regency began in 1811, when the future George IV started ruling for his ailing father, and the Prince Regent liked Austen's novels enough to keep a set in each of his residences.
Q 02What was Jane Austen's working title for Pride and Prejudice?
First Impressions
First Impressions had been used for another novel by the time Austen revised her manuscript in 1811–12, which is the likely reason she renamed it.
Q 03What did Austen sell outright for £110 when Pride and Prejudice was published?
The copyright
The copyright went to Thomas Egerton for a one-off payment, so when the first edition sold out within a year the profits were his, and he made more from the novel than its author did.
Q 04What completes Austen's line 'a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of...'?
a wife
A wife is the joke: the next sentence shows it is the local families doing the wanting, each treating such a man as 'the rightful property' of one of their daughters.
Q 05How is Jane sent to the Bingleys?
On horseback
On horseback, because Mrs Bennet hopes rain will keep her there overnight, and it works too well: Jane arrives soaked and is laid up at the Bingleys' with a bad cold for days.
Q 06In which English county is the Bennets' Longbourn estate in Pride and Prejudice?
Hertfordshire
Hertfordshire puts Longbourn a mile from Meryton, where a militia regiment is quartered for the winter, which is how the Bennet girls come to meet the charming Mr Wickham.
Q 07Why is it so urgent that the Bennet daughters marry well?
A male cousin will inherit the estate
A male cousin will inherit the estate because Longbourn is entailed on male heirs and the Bennets have no son, so Mr Bennet's death would leave Mrs Bennet and her daughters without their home.
Q 08What is Mr Darcy said to be worth a year in Pride and Prejudice?
£10,000
£10,000 a year is the rumour that sweeps the Meryton ball within five minutes of his arrival, and the room admires him for half the evening until his proud manners turn the tide.
Q 09What is Mr Darcy's first name?
Fitzwilliam
Fitzwilliam appears only twice in the novel, where nearly everyone calls him plain Mr Darcy; it is also the surname of his cousin the Colonel, from his mother's side of the family.
Q 10What is the name of the estate Mr Bingley rents near Longbourn?
Netherfield Park
Netherfield Park is only rented because Mr Bingley's fortune of nearly £100,000 came from trade: his father meant to buy an estate but did not live to do it.
Q 11Why won't Darcy dance with Elizabeth at the first ball?
He says she is 'not handsome enough'
He says she is 'not handsome enough' to tempt him, within her hearing, and Elizabeth gets her own back by telling the story 'with great spirit among her friends'.
Q 12What is Mr Collins's profession in Pride and Prejudice?
Clergyman
Clergyman: he owes his parish to his patroness, Lady Catherine de Bourgh, and even while proposing to Elizabeth he quotes her orders: 'Mr Collins, you must marry. A clergyman like you must marry.'
Q 13After Elizabeth turns him down, whom does Mr Collins marry?
Charlotte Lucas
Q 21How does Lady Catherine's angry visit to Longbourn end up helping Darcy?
It gives him reason to hope
It gives him reason to hope: Elizabeth refuses to promise never to accept him, Lady Catherine repeats this to her nephew in a fury, and he later tells Elizabeth, 'It taught me to hope.'
Q 22What does Mrs Bennet complain that her husband has no compassion for?
Her poor nerves
Her poor nerves get no sympathy from Mr Bennet, who says he has 'a high respect' for them: 'They are my old friends. I have heard you mention them with consideration these twenty years at least.'
Q 23Whose praise of Darcy at Pemberley shakes Elizabeth's opinion of him?
His housekeeper
Charlotte Lucas accepts him within days of Elizabeth's refusal, telling her shocked friend that she is 'not romantic' and asks 'only a comfortable home'.
Q 14How is George Wickham connected to Pemberley?
He is the son of the late owner's steward
He is the son of the late owner's steward and was old Mr Darcy's godson; he tells Meryton that Darcy cheated him of a church living, when in fact he took £3,000 instead and squandered it.
Q 15What does Darcy hand Elizabeth the morning after she refuses him?
A letter
A letter, and a long one, explains why he parted Bingley from Jane and what Wickham really did; by the end of it Elizabeth admits, 'Till this moment, I never knew myself.'
Q 16Where does Darcy make his first, disastrous proposal to Elizabeth?
In Kent, while she is staying near Rosings
In Kent, while she is staying near Rosings, Darcy begins 'In vain have I struggled' and dwells on her family's inferiority, and Elizabeth calls him 'the last man in the world' she could be prevailed on to marry.
Q 17With whom is Elizabeth touring Derbyshire when she unexpectedly meets Darcy at Pemberley?
Her aunt and uncle Gardiner
Her aunt and uncle Gardiner are in trade, just the sort of connection Darcy once looked down on, yet at Pemberley he invites Mr Gardiner to fish his stream as often as he likes.
Q 18Which Bennet sister runs off with Wickham?
Lydia
Lydia, the youngest and her mother's favourite, leaves a note calling the elopement 'a good joke' and looking forward to signing her name 'Lydia Wickham'.
Q 19How does Elizabeth first learn that Darcy arranged her sister's marriage?
The bride lets slip he attended
The bride lets slip he attended, then remembers it was meant to be a secret; Elizabeth writes to her aunt Mrs Gardiner, who reveals that Darcy found the runaways and paid to bring the marriage about.
Q 20Whom has Lady Catherine long intended Darcy to marry?
Her daughter Anne
Her daughter Anne and Darcy were, she tells Elizabeth, intended for each other from infancy: 'While in their cradles we planned the union,' she and Darcy's late mother being sisters.
His housekeeper, Mrs Reynolds, shows the visitors round and says she has known him since he was four and 'never had a cross word from him in my life', the opposite of all Elizabeth believed.
Q 24To which seaside resort does the militia move from Meryton in Pride and Prejudice?
Brighton
Brighton has the younger Bennet girls in despair when the regiment leaves for its summer camp there, and their mother joins in: 'A little sea-bathing would set me up for ever.'
Q 25Under what byline did Austen's novels appear during her lifetime?
Anonymously
Anonymously: her first title page said only 'By a Lady', and her name reached print only after her death, when her brother Henry identified her in a note published with two further novels.
Q 26In which Hampshire village was Jane Austen born in 1775?
Steventon
Steventon is where the Reverend George Austen was rector, and Jane lived in its rectory until she was 25, drafting early versions of three of her novels before the family moved to Bath.
Q 27Which two Jane Austen novels were published together after her death?
Northanger Abbey and Persuasion
Northanger Abbey and Persuasion came out together five months after she died. Northanger Abbey was the first novel she ever sold, for £10 in 1803, but the publisher never printed it.
Q 28Who played Elizabeth and Darcy in MGM's 1940 film of Pride and Prejudice?
Greer Garson and Laurence Olivier
Greer Garson and Laurence Olivier got the parts only after a 1936 plan to star Clark Gable and Norma Shearer died with producer Irving Thalberg; the finished film won an Oscar for its art direction.
Q 29Which famous novelist co-wrote MGM's 1940 film of Pride and Prejudice?
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley, author of Brave New World, shared the screenplay credit with Jane Murfin on a version that moved the story to a later period, reportedly so the costumes could be grander.
Q 30Who wrote the BBC's 1995 Pride and Prejudice series?
Andrew Davies
Andrew Davies built his script on the view that the novel is 'all about sex and money, about young people with pumping hormones', yet called Austen the one writer he adapts with 'awe and reverence'.