Nathaniel Hawthorne
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50 free Nathaniel Hawthorne trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Nathaniel Hawthorne turned the guilt of Puritan New England into some of the most haunting fiction in American literature. Behind the stern portraits is a surprisingly human story: a shy young man from Salem who changed the spelling of his own name, shovelled manure on a utopian farm, and counted poets, philosophers and politicians among his closest friends. This quiz gathers the most interesting facts about him. It covers his family's dark history, his marriage and his homes in Concord, the plots and characters of The Scarlet Letter and The House of the Seven Gables, and short stories such as 'Young Goodman Brown' and 'Rappaccini's Daughter'. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you pick up a fun fact even when you miss. It suits students meeting Hawthorne in English class, book club readers, and anyone who enjoys literary trivia. The first questions are the friendliest, and the deeper cuts come later.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which Emma Stone teen comedy from 2010 takes its premise from Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter?
Easy A
Easy A has its heroine stitch a red letter onto her clothes after reading the novel in English class. The writer set out to give the 1850 book a high-school update.
Q 02Nathaniel Hawthorne, born in Salem in 1804, shared his birthday with which American national holiday?
Independence Day
Independence Day 1804 was the date. The house where he was born was moved across Salem in 1958 to stand beside the mansion that inspired one of his novels.
Q 03Which letter did Hawthorne add to his surname, probably to distance himself from a notorious ancestor?
W
W was the addition, made in his early twenties soon after college. He was born with the shorter spelling used by his Puritan forebears.
Q 04What role did Nathaniel Hawthorne's great-great-grandfather play in the Salem witch trials of 1692?
A judge
A judge who questioned the accused, he is not known to have repented, unlike his colleague Samuel Sewall. That inherited guilt runs through the author's fiction.
Q 05Which novel did Herman Melville dedicate to Nathaniel Hawthorne a year after the two met at a picnic?
Moby-Dick
Moby-Dick was taking shape when the two writers became friends in 1850. Days after they met, Melville's long unsigned review praising the older man's stories appeared in print.
Q 06Which band grew up in Hawthorne, a Los Angeles suburb named after the author Nathaniel Hawthorne?
The Beach Boys
The Beach Boys' Wilson brothers were raised there, and a landmark now marks their childhood home. The town took the writer's name because a founder's daughter shared his birthday.
Q 07In The Scarlet Letter, the embroidered 'A' on Hester Prynne's dress brands her as guilty of what?
Adultery
Adultery is the charge: with her husband long absent, she bears a child and refuses to name the father. She is sentenced to wear the letter for life.
Q 08Which Concord writer planted a vegetable garden for Hawthorne and his bride before they moved in?
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau dug and planted it in 1842 as the newlyweds prepared to arrive. A recreation of that heirloom garden grows on the grounds today.
Q 09Hawthorne wrote an 1852 campaign biography for which college friend, who went on to win the presidency?
Franklin Pierce
Franklin Pierce won the White House and rewarded his biographer with a well-paid diplomatic post abroad. The two stayed close until the author's death.
Q 10In which Puritan town, rather than Hawthorne's native Salem, is The Scarlet Letter set?
Boston
Boston in the 1640s is the setting, about fifty years before the witch trials many readers associate with the book. The story opens with a crowd gathering to watch a punishment.
Q 11At which New England college were Nathaniel Hawthorne and a future US president students in the 1820s?
Bowdoin
Bowdoin was picked partly for its low tuition, with an uncle paying the bills. He later called himself an idle student who neglected the rules to nurse his own fancies.
Q 12Which future poet was Hawthorne's college classmate and, decades later, a pallbearer at his funeral?
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow graduated in the same class of 1825. A week after his first story collection came out, the novelist posted a copy to his old classmate.
Q 13What was the occupation of Nathaniel Hawthorne's father, who died of yellow fever in Suriname in 1808?
Sea captain
Q 21In The Scarlet Letter, what name does Hester Prynne give the daughter she calls her only treasure?
Pearl
Pearl is so named because she was dearly bought, costing her mother everything she had. Shunned like her mother, the girl grows up with no playmates.
Q 22In The Scarlet Letter, which admired young minister is secretly the father of Hester Prynne's child?
Arthur Dimmesdale
Arthur Dimmesdale keeps silent while his health fails and a vengeful lodger torments him. He confesses in public at last and dies in her arms.
Q 23In The Scarlet Letter, Hester Prynne's missing husband returns under the name Roger Chillingworth, working as what?
A physician
A sea captain, he belonged to Salem's East India Marine Society. His widow then moved her three children in with her own relatives, the Mannings.
Q 14In which state did the young Hawthorne roam the woods near Sebago Lake, a time he recalled fondly?
Maine
Maine was home for part of his boyhood, in a house his uncles built at Raymond. He remembered the country as wild, with only scattered clearings among the forest.
Q 15Which utopian community did Hawthorne join in 1841, where his job was shovelling a hill of manure?
Brook Farm
Brook Farm's manure heap was nicknamed the Gold Mine. He joined mainly to save money for his marriage, paid a $1,000 deposit and left within the year.
Q 16Which Salem-born painter, introduced to Nathaniel Hawthorne by her sister, married him in 1842?
Sophia Peabody
Sophia Peabody was one of the first American women to earn a living as an artist. She had been mostly bedridden with headaches, which seem to have eased after the two met.
Q 17Hawthorne worked in which kind of government office, the setting of The Scarlet Letter's long preface?
A custom house
A custom house employed him twice, the second time as surveyor for the port of Salem. He told a friend that mornings there undid all the writing he managed later in the day.
Q 18Which English port city was Nathaniel Hawthorne sent to as United States consul from 1853 to 1857?
Liverpool
Liverpool was considered the best-paid post in the foreign service at the time. He commuted to the consulate by steamboat across the River Mersey from Rock Ferry.
Q 19Which president did Hawthorne meet at the White House before writing 'Chiefly About War Matters'?
Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln kept the visitors waiting about half an hour while he ate breakfast. The magazine's editor asked the author to soften his unflattering sketch of the man.
Q 20Nathaniel Hawthorne lies on Authors' Ridge, near Emerson and the Alcotts, in which Concord cemetery?
Sleepy Hollow
Sleepy Hollow became his resting place in 1864. His wife and a daughter, first buried in London, were moved to lie beside him in 2006.
A physician is the role that lets him lodge with the ailing man he suspects of fathering her child. He reached the colony late after being held captive on the way.
Q 24In The Scarlet Letter, on what structure must Hester Prynne stand for three hours of public shame?
The scaffold
The scaffold appears three times in the novel: at the opening, in a secret midnight vigil, and at the final public confession.
Q 25Late in The Scarlet Letter, townspeople who admire Hester Prynne's strength say her 'A' means what?
Able
Able is the new reading, earned by years of nursing the sick and helping the poor. A badge meant as lifelong shame ends up as a mark of respect.
Q 26Which actress played Hester Prynne opposite Gary Oldman in the 1995 film of The Scarlet Letter?
Demi Moore
Demi Moore defended the film's rewritten ending, arguing that the novel was too dense to work on screen as written. Robert Duvall co-starred.
Q 27In The House of the Seven Gables, which family is said to be cursed by a man hanged for wizardry?
The Pyncheons
The Pyncheons built their mansion on land the family's founder seized from the man he accused. The colonel was then found dead in his armchair at the housewarming.
Q 28Which horror star played Clifford in the 1940 film of Hawthorne's The House of the Seven Gables?
Vincent Price
Vincent Price came back to the story in 1963, starring in all three parts of a film anthology of Hawthorne tales that included a loose retelling of the novel.
Q 29Which Hawthorne novel, narrated by the poet Miles Coverdale, is set on a utopian farming commune?
The Blithedale Romance
The Blithedale Romance is the only one of his novels told in the first person. Its drowning scene echoes a night when he helped search a river for a local woman's body.
Q 30Hawthorne found the idea for The Marble Faun in a statue in the Capitoline Museum of which city?
Rome
Rome was where he saw the Faun of Praxiteles in early 1858, during a long family tour. British publishers renamed the finished novel Transformation against his wishes.