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60 free Wuthering Heights trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Wuthering Heights trivia quiz covers both generations of Emily Brontë's novel: the snowed-in tenant and the ghost at the window, the orphan from Liverpool, the dog at Thrushcross Grange, Catherine's fatal choice, Heathcliff's three-year absence and his revenge on Hindley, Edgar and Isabella, the sickly Linton, the illiterate Hareton and the reconciliation at the end. Nelly Dean, Joseph and Mr Lockwood all get their due. The second half is about the book in the world: the Ellis Bell pseudonym, the publisher who bundled it with Agnes Grey, the reviewer who thought its author must be suicidal, Rossetti's 'fiend of a book', Virginia Woolf's verdict, Charlotte's 1850 edit, Top Withens and the Yorkshire dialect. It closes with the screen and the charts: Olivier and Oberon in 1939, Fiennes and Binoche, Tom Hardy, and the eighteen-year-old Kate Bush who wrote a number one in an evening. Every answer has been checked against the Wikipedia articles on the novel, its author, the 1939 film and the song, and each explanation adds one detail worth carrying up onto the moor. Jane Eyre has its own BrainPickle quiz.
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Q 01Under which pen name did Emily Brontë publish Wuthering Heights in 1847?
Ellis Bell
The three sisters kept their initials: Charlotte was Currer and Anne was Acton; only two copies of their joint book of poems had sold the year before.
Q 02How many novels did Emily Brontë write?
One
She died of tuberculosis in December 1848, aged 30, a year after it was published and before its reputation was made.
Q 03The novel was published in one three-volume set together with which other book?
Anne Brontë's Agnes Grey
Emily's book filled the first two volumes and her sister's the third; the publisher Thomas Newby only hurried after Jane Eyre became a hit.
Q 04Which publisher accepted the manuscript alongside Agnes Grey?
Thomas Cautley Newby
He had been slow to deal with the sisters and only saw the advantage of the family connection once Jane Eyre took off with a rival firm.
Q 05In which year does the novel's framing story open, with a new tenant visiting his landlord?
1801
The tenant is snowed in overnight, reads a dead woman's diary and dreams of her ghost begging at the window.
Q 06What is the name of the new tenant whose visit opens the novel?
Mr Lockwood
He rents the Grange to escape society and narrates until chapter 4, when the housekeeper takes over the tale.
Q 07What is the name of the second, more genteel house in the novel, home of the Lintons?
Thrushcross Grange
It sits in a walled, landscaped park; Ponden Hall near Haworth is often claimed as its model, though it looks more like the farmhouse.
Q 08Which housekeeper tells most of the story to the convalescing tenant?
Nelly Dean
Ellen Dean has served three generations of Earnshaws and two of Lintons; one 1958 critic argued she is the novel's true villain.
Q 09In which city does Mr Earnshaw find the orphan he brings home and names Heathcliff?
Liverpool
He walked the 60 miles rather than take a horse away from the harvest; the boy is described as 'like a gipsy' and possibly a Lascar or castaway.
Q 10How old are Hindley and Catherine Earnshaw when the foundling arrives?
Fourteen and six
Hindley beats the newcomer from the start; Catherine becomes his inseparable companion on the moors.
Q 11What happens to Catherine when she and Heathcliff spy on the Lintons?
She is attacked by their dog
The Lintons take her in for weeks and send the ragged boy home, and she comes back a young lady.
Q 12Why does Catherine tell Nelly she cannot marry Heathcliff, even though she loves him?
His low social status
Heathcliff overhears that part and not the rest, and vanishes without a word.
Q 13Whom does Catherine marry?
Edgar Linton
She is 17 and he is 21; some critics read the choice as a surrender of nature to culture, with disastrous results for everyone.
Q 21What can Hareton read when the novel opens?
Only his own name
It is carved over the farmhouse door with the date 1500, marking how long the Earnshaws have held the land.
Q 22Which sanctimonious old servant speaks in thick Yorkshire dialect that Charlotte later toned down?
Joseph
A 1970 study by the linguist K. M. Petyt found Emily had recorded the Haworth dialect accurately; Charlotte feared 'Southerns' would find it unintelligible.
Q 23How does Heathcliff die?
Starves himself in Catherine's old room
He is 38 and dies intestate; the two estates revert to Hareton and Cathy, and locals report seeing two ghosts on the moors.
Q 14How long is Heathcliff away before he returns mysteriously rich?
Three years
Nobody ever learns how he made his money or acquired his ruthless grasp of the law.
Q 15Whom does Heathcliff marry purely as revenge on Edgar?
Isabella
She is 19 and infatuated; he sneers afterwards that she had pictured in him 'a hero of romance', and she flees south while pregnant.
Q 16Through what vice of Hindley's does Heathcliff gain control of Wuthering Heights?
Gambling
He becomes mortgagee of the estate; Hindley later dies of drink and his son Hareton inherits only debts.
Q 17Catherine dies shortly after doing what?
Giving birth to a daughter
She had locked herself in her room and refused food for three days after Edgar banished Heathcliff; the baby is also called Cathy.
Q 18What does Heathcliff do at Catherine's deathbed that drives the rest of the novel?
Calls on her ghost to haunt him
Years later he admits he has opened her grave twice, and he dies in her old room.
Q 19What is the name of the sickly son born to Heathcliff and his runaway wife?
Linton
He is raised in the south until he is twelve; his father then forces him to marry young Cathy to seize the Grange.
Q 20Which character, heir to the farmhouse, is kept illiterate and made to speak like a servant?
Hareton Earnshaw
Young Cathy mocks his uncouth speech at first, then teaches him to read, and they plan to marry.
Q 24How old is Heathcliff when he dies?
38
He was 20 when he married Edgar's sister and has no next of kin, so his amassed wealth would in theory escheat to the crown.
Q 25Whose three graves does the tenant find side by side at the end?
Catherine, Edgar and Heathcliff
He decides all three are finally at peace, though the locals are less sure.
Q 26What does the word 'wuthering' describe, according to the novel's own explanation?
The atmospheric tumult of stormy weather
The house's stunted firs and gaunt thorns all lean one way from the north wind, 'as if craving alms of the sun'.
Q 27Which ruined farmhouse near Haworth did Ellen Nussey suggest as the model for the house?
Top Withens
Its layout does not actually match the farmhouse in the book, but walkers still trek up to it across the moor.
Q 28Which periodical's reviewer wondered how anyone could write the book 'without committing suicide'?
Graham's Lady Magazine
The Atlas called it 'a strange, inartistic story' with 'a sort of rugged power' in every chapter.
Q 29Which Pre-Raphaelite poet called the book 'a fiend of a book' whose action 'is laid in hell'?
Dante Gabriel Rossetti
He also thought it the best novel he had read 'for two ages'; his friend Swinburne became another early champion.
Q 30Which modernist novelist declared in 1925 that Emily 'was a greater poet than Charlotte'?
Virginia Woolf
Until the 1880s Jane Eyre was regarded as the best of the sisters' novels; a biography of Emily began to shift that view.