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60 free Huckleberry Finn trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Huckleberry Finn trivia quiz covers Mark Twain's 1884 novel from the first ain't-no-matter sentence to the flight for Indian Territory. The easy questions are ones anyone who read it in school can attempt: who tells the story, who travels with Huck on the raft, which river they float down, how Huck escapes his father and which earlier novel this one continues. From there it moves through the plot: Jackson's Island, the wrecked steamboat, the fog, the Grangerford-Shepherdson feud, the Duke and the King, the Wilks inheritance and the Phelps farm. The harder end is for Twain readers and literature students: the real Hannibal boy Huck was based on, the manuscript that turned up in a steamer trunk, the obscene engraving that held up printing, the Concord library ban, Louisa May Alcott's complaint, Twain's letter to a Brooklyn librarian, Hemingway's verdict and Ralph Ellison's reply, the 1955 CBS version that cut Jim entirely, the 2011 expurgated edition, Big River on Broadway and Percival Everett's Pulitzer-winning James. Every answer was checked against encyclopaedia entries on the novel, its author and its adaptations before publishing, and the supporting sentence is stored with each question. If you enjoy this one, try our Mark Twain, Tom Sawyer and American literature quizzes next.
30 of 60 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What was Mark Twain's real name?
Samuel Langhorne Clemens
He took his pen name from a riverboat leadsman's call.
Q 02The novel is written throughout in what kind of English, then a novelty in major American literature?
Vernacular
Its local-colour regionalism helped change the course of American children's literature.
Q 03In which decade is the novel set?
The 1840s
It depicts an antebellum society that had ceased to exist more than twenty years before publication.
Q 04What is the name of the fictional Missouri town where the story begins?
St. Petersburg
It stands in for Hannibal, where Twain grew up.
Q 05Which two women become Huck's guardians at the start of the book?
The Widow Douglas and Miss Watson
The widow tries to sivilize him as her Christian duty; her sister is a tough old spinster.
Q 06Why does Pap Finn come back into his son's life?
To get hold of the boy's fortune
When that fails he imprisons Huck in a remote cabin.
Q 07How does Huck escape from Pap's cabin?
He fakes his own murder
Pap had tried to kill him during a delirium tremens crisis.
Q 08Huck reunites with the runaway Jim on an island named after whom?
Jackson
Jim ran away after overhearing that Miss Watson planned to sell him.
Q 09Huck and Jim plan to float down the Mississippi to which town in the free state of Illinois?
Cairo
They drift past it in the fog and, unable to go upriver, carry on south.
Q 10The Illinois town Huck and Jim were aiming for sits at the confluence of the Mississippi and which other river?
The Ohio
Reaching it would have let Jim head up the Ohio to the free states.
Q 11What does Jim find in the floating house and hide from Huck?
A man shot dead
At the very end he tells Huck the dead man was Pap.
Q 12How does Huck disguise himself to gather news in town?
As a girl
Judith Loftus sees through it and tells him there is a reward out for Jim.
Q 13What trick does Huck play on Jim after they are separated in the fog?
He convinces Jim he dreamed the whole thing
Jim's hurt reaction surprises Huck into apologising to him.
Q 21What happens to the King and the Duke in the end?
They are tarred, feathered and run out on a rail
Huck had tried to warn them that Jim had exposed their scam.
Q 22Who reveals at the end that Miss Watson has died and freed Jim in her will?
Aunt Polly
Tom admits he knew all along but wanted to rescue Jim in style.
Q 23Where does Huck say he will flee at the end of the book to escape being adopted?
Indian Territory
He wants to avoid being sivilized by Aunt Sally.
Q 14The Grangerfords are locked in a 30-year feud with which family?
The Shepherdsons
All the Grangerford men are killed in an ambush after a daughter elopes with a Shepherdson boy.
Q 15What is the name of the Grangerford boy of Huck's own age who befriends him?
Buck
The family is headed by the sexagenarian Colonel Saul Grangerford.
Q 16The two con men who board the raft claim to be a duke and what else?
The lost Dauphin of France
The other claims to be the long-lost Duke of Bridgewater; Huck and Jim see through both but play along.
Q 17Whose estate do the King and the Duke try to steal by posing as English brothers?
Peter Wilks's
Huck tries to recover the money for the dead man's three orphaned nieces.
Q 18Who is the only townsperson to recognise that the King and Duke are not really British?
Doctor Robinson
He warns the town, but nobody listens.
Q 19To whom do the con men sell Jim?
The Phelpses
Huck vows to free him even though he believes he will go to hell for it.
Q 20When Tom Sawyer arrives at the farm where Jim is held, who does he pretend to be?
His half-brother Sid
The Phelpses had already mistaken Huck for their expected nephew Tom.
Q 24About how old is Huck, according to the novel?
Thirteen or fourteen
He has been raised by the town drunk and struggles to fit into society.
Q 25Which real Hannibal boy did Twain say he had drawn exactly as he was in creating Huck?
Tom Blankenship
He was the son of a sawmill labourer who lived in a ramshackle house behind Twain's boyhood home.
Q 26Jim may have been based partly on which former slave whom Twain employed as a butler and confidant?
George Griffin
Twain described him as shrewd, wise, polite and always good-natured.
Q 27What was Twain's original working title for the manuscript?
Huckleberry Finn's Autobiography
He at first meant to follow Huck into adulthood, then abandoned the plan.
Q 28Between which years did Twain compose the story in pen on notepaper?
1876 and 1883
He set the manuscript aside for years before returning to it after a trip down the Hudson.
Q 29What was Twain's final version of the novel's opening line?
You don't know about me, without you have read a book
He revised it three times, from You will not know about me to You do not know about me.
Q 30In which country was the novel first published, in December 1884?
The United Kingdom
The US edition followed on 18 February 1885.