Les Misérables Trivia
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99 free Les Misérables trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
45 free Les Miserables trivia questions with answers. Victor Hugo's 1862 novel is one of the longest ever written; the sung-through musical it inspired has run in London since 1985 and is the longest-running musical in West End history; and the 2012 film took $442 million and three Oscars. This quiz covers all three: the novel's plot and its real-life sources, the characters from Fantine to Gavroche, the concept album and the RSC production, the original casts, the songs, the Tonys, and the film's live singing, weight loss and haircut. The easy questions ask who wrote the novel, what Valjean stole and what Prisoner 24601 is called; the harder ones want the ex-convict Valjean was modelled on, the number of chapters, the show that gave Alain Boublil the idea, the theatre where the English version opened, how many performances the first Broadway run managed, and which original stars turn up in the film. It suits theatre lovers, book-club members and anyone who has ever hummed 'One Day More' on a bus. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the novel, the musical, the film, the songs and the cast, and each question carries the sentence that backs it up.
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Q 01Who wrote the novel Les Misérables?
Victor Hugo
Victor Hugo completed Les Misérables during his exile on Guernsey; Flaubert disliked the finished book, finding 'neither truth nor greatness' in it.
Q 02In which city did Les Misérables first go on sale in 1862?
Brussels
Brussels came first because Hugo, living in exile on Guernsey for opposing Napoleon III, had placed the novel with the Belgian publisher Albert Lacroix.
Q 03What did Jean Valjean steal, earning him five years in prison that grew to nineteen?
A loaf of bread
A loaf of bread was all he took, to feed his widowed sister's seven starving children; four failed escape attempts stretched his sentence to nineteen years.
Q 04What is Valjean's prisoner number in the musical?
24601
24601 is what Javert calls him all through the show; the prison prologue where it is first heard was added for London in 1985, as the French original opened at the factory.
Q 05Which cleric shelters Valjean and then lies to the police, saying the stolen silver was a gift?
The Bishop of Digne
The Bishop of Digne, Monseigneur Myriel, had already handed his palace to the town hospital and moved into its small building, which is where he takes Valjean in.
Q 06What does Monseigneur Myriel give Valjean in addition to the silverware he had stolen?
Two silver candlesticks
Two silver candlesticks are added to the gift; Myriel tells Valjean he has bought his soul for God and that the silver should make him an honest man.
Q 07Under what alias does Valjean become a factory owner and mayor of Montreuil-sur-Mer?
Monsieur Madeleine
Monsieur Madeleine is the name under which he grows rich making black glass beads and becomes mayor; the other three names are aliases he uses later in the novel.
Q 08Valjean was loosely based on which ex-convict who founded France's first private detective agency?
Eugène François Vidocq
Eugène François Vidocq was a convict who turned policeman and ran the Sûreté, so Hugo drew on him twice: for the hunted Valjean and for his pursuer, Inspector Javert.
Q 09In the novel Les Misérables, what does Fantine sell besides her hair to pay the Thénardiers?
Her two front teeth
Her two front teeth are sold to a travelling dentist for two gold napoleons, after her hair fetched ten francs; she then turns to prostitution.
Q 10The Thénardiers, who abuse young Cosette, run an inn in which village?
Montfermeil
Montfermeil, east of Paris, is where the Thénardiers keep their inn; Émile Bayard's drawing of Cosette sweeping there became the musical's emblem.
Q 11Which gift does Valjean buy young Cosette on the Christmas Eve he finds her?
A doll
A doll from the stall opposite the inn: Cosette calls it 'the lady' and had only dared steal a glance at it, and once it is hers she names it Catherine.
Q 12Where do Valjean and Cosette hide from Javert for several years in Paris?
A convent
A convent, the Petit-Picpus, takes them in; its gardener is Fauchelevent, the man Valjean once rescued from under a cart, and Valjean works there as a gardener too.
Q 13Street urchin Gavroche is secretly the eldest son of which couple?
The Thénardier innkeepers
The Thénardier innkeepers are his parents, though they show him no affection, so he fends for himself on the streets of Paris; Éponine and Azelma are his sisters.
Q 21The original French Les Misérables of 1980 was staged in what kind of Paris venue?
A sports arena
A sports arena, the Palais des Sports, housed Robert Hossein's staging in 1980; it closed within months, and the show might have ended there had its album not reached a London producer.
Q 22Which producer took on the English-language Les Misérables after hearing its French concept album in 1983?
Cameron Mackintosh
Cameron Mackintosh developed it with the Royal Shakespeare Company, whose team expanded and reordered the French original and added a prologue on Valjean's past.
Q 23Who wrote the English lyrics of Les Misérables, refusing to call them a 'translation'?
Herbert Kretzmer
Q 14Les Misérables culminates in which real Paris uprising?
The June Rebellion of 1832
The June Rebellion of 1832 broke out at the funeral of General Lamarque, who had died of cholera, and was crushed at the barricades within two days.
Q 15How does Valjean escape from the fallen barricade carrying the wounded Marius?
Through the sewers
Through the sewers of Paris he carries the unconscious Marius; at the locked outlet grate he runs into Thénardier, who lets him out in exchange for his money.
Q 16How does Javert die?
He drowns himself in the Seine
He drowns himself in the Seine after leaving a note of suggestions for the prefect on prison conditions, unable to reconcile the law with the mercy Valjean has shown him.
Q 17Hugo devotes 19 chapters of Volume II to which battle, finishing the book at its battlefield?
Waterloo
Waterloo fills 19 chapters; in the digression's final pages Thénardier, looting corpses, accidentally saves Colonel Pontmercy, a meeting that drives much of the later plot.
Q 18Hugo supposedly asked his publisher how Les Misérables was selling with a message containing only what?
A question mark
A question mark was the whole message in the often-told, probably apocryphal tale, and the publisher is said to have replied with a single exclamation mark.
Q 19Which two Frenchmen conceived and wrote the original Les Misérables musical?
Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schönberg
Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schönberg released it first as a French concept album in 1980; the Paris staging that followed closed within months, and only the English reworking made it a worldwide hit.
Q 20Watching which musical in London gave the show's librettist the idea for Les Misérables?
Oliver!
Oliver! was the show: when the Artful Dodger walked on, the lyricist pictured Hugo's street urchin Gavroche, and then saw the rest of the novel's characters singing on a stage.
Herbert Kretzmer, a South African-born journalist, got the job because the producer admired the English lyrics he had written for Charles Aznavour, including the hit 'She'.
Q 24The English-language Les Misérables opened in October 1985 at which London venue, then home of the RSC?
The Barbican Centre
The Barbican Centre, the RSC's London base, hosted the October 1985 opening; the show moved to the Palace Theatre that December and in 2004 to the smaller Queen's, renamed the Sondheim in 2019.
Q 25Which two RSC directors shaped and directed the English version of Les Misérables?
Trevor Nunn and John Caird
Trevor Nunn and John Caird had already turned a vast novel into theatre with the RSC's eight-and-a-half-hour Nicholas Nickleby in 1980, and this show won them the 1987 Tony for direction.
Q 26Who originated the role of Jean Valjean in London and on Broadway?
Colm Wilkinson
Colm Wilkinson also sang the Phantom at the 1985 Sydmonton preview of that show, and he returns in the 2012 film in a cameo as the churchman whose mercy changes Valjean.
Q 27Which Broadway star played Fantine in the original 1985 London cast?
Patti LuPone
Patti LuPone was already in London for The Cradle Will Rock at the Old Vic and stayed on to play Fantine; the two parts together won her the 1985 Olivier Award for Best Actress in a Musical.
Q 28Which play is the only West End show to have run longer than Les Misérables?
The Mousetrap
The Mousetrap, Agatha Christie's whodunnit, opened in 1952 and paused only when the pandemic shut theatres from March 2020 to May 2021; Les Misérables is the West End's longest-running musical.
Q 29When Les Misérables left Broadway in 2003, which musical had run longer?
Cats
Cats held the record with 7,485 performances when Les Misérables closed after 6,680; the closing had been set for March 2003, but a rush for tickets pushed it back to May.
Q 30Frances Ruffelle won a 1987 Tony Award as which Les Misérables character, who sings 'On My Own'?
Éponine
Éponine won Ruffelle the Tony for Best Featured Actress, one of eight the show took from twelve nominations, after she had moved with the part from the London original to Broadway.