Match the Classic Novel to Its Setting
Fifteen classic novels, fifteen settings. Read each clue card, commit to a place, then reveal the answer underneath. Some of these are easy the moment you remember the plot; a few are trickier because the novel travels between two very different places, or because the “setting” that made the book famous isn’t the one where the story actually opens.
Setting does real work in most of these novels: the isolation of a moor, the closeness of a small fictional town, or the confinement of a ship all shape what the characters can and can’t do. Guess first, then use the explanation under each reveal to see how the place and the plot depend on each other.
Where is Wuthering Heights mainly set?
Reveal the answer to clue 1
Both houses in the novel, Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange, sit on the isolated Yorkshire moors that shape the whole story.
Where is Dracula mainly set?
Reveal the answer to clue 2
The novel opens with Jonathan Harker’s journey to Count Dracula’s castle in Transylvania, then follows the Count to Whitby and London.
Where is Moby-Dick mainly set?
Reveal the answer to clue 3
Almost the entire novel takes place at sea, on Captain Ahab’s whaling voyage in pursuit of the white whale.
Where is The Scarlet Letter mainly set?
Reveal the answer to clue 4
Hawthorne set the novel in the Puritan settlement of Boston in the 1640s.
Where is Great Expectations mainly set?
Reveal the answer to clue 5
Pip grows up near the marsh country of Kent before moving to London to take up his “great expectations.”
Where is Pride and Prejudice mainly set?
Reveal the answer to clue 6
The Bennet family lives in the fictional Hertfordshire village of Longbourn; Pemberley, Mr. Darcy’s estate, is in Derbyshire.
Where is Anna Karenina mainly set?
Reveal the answer to clue 7
Tolstoy’s novel moves between the two great Russian capitals of the era, along with country estates.
Where is Treasure Island mainly set?
Reveal the answer to clue 8
Jim Hawkins sails aboard the Hispaniola in search of buried pirate treasure on a remote island.
Where is The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn mainly set?
Reveal the answer to clue 9
Huck and Jim travel by raft down the Mississippi, and the river itself shapes nearly every chapter.
Where is Frankenstein mainly set?
Reveal the answer to clue 10
The novel’s frame story is told from a ship trapped in Arctic ice, while Victor Frankenstein’s own story ranges from Geneva to Ingolstadt to the Scottish islands.
Where is Jane Eyre mainly set?
Reveal the answer to clue 11
After a harsh school upbringing, Jane takes a position as governess at Thornfield Hall in the north of England.
Where is Middlemarch mainly set?
Reveal the answer to clue 12
George Eliot invented the Midlands town of Middlemarch as the setting for her sprawling study of provincial life.
Where is A Tale of Two Cities mainly set?
Reveal the answer to clue 13
Dickens’s novel moves between the two cities the title names, set against the years surrounding the French Revolution.
Where is Ivanhoe mainly set?
Reveal the answer to clue 14
Walter Scott set his novel in medieval England during the reign of Richard the Lionheart.
Where is The Picture of Dorian Gray mainly set?
Reveal the answer to clue 15
Oscar Wilde’s novel is set among the drawing rooms and studios of fashionable late-Victorian London.
Why setting is worth quizzing on
A handful of these settings are single, fixed locations, like Middlemarch’s invented English town. Others, like Frankenstein’s Arctic frame story or Dracula’s shift from Transylvania to England, use a change of place to signal a change in the story itself. If you found the frame-narrative questions harder than the others, that’s normal: they ask you to remember the scaffolding around the plot, not just the plot.
Complete answer key
| Novel | Setting |
|---|---|
| Wuthering Heights | The Yorkshire moors, England |
| Dracula | Transylvania, then England |
| Moby-Dick | Aboard the whaling ship Pequod, at sea |
| The Scarlet Letter | 17th-century Boston, Massachusetts |
| Great Expectations | The Kent marshes, then London |
| Pride and Prejudice | Rural England, mainly Hertfordshire and Derbyshire |
| Anna Karenina | Imperial Russia, mainly Moscow and St. Petersburg |
| Treasure Island | The high seas and a Caribbean island |
| The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn | Along the Mississippi River |
| Frankenstein | Geneva, the Arctic, and across Europe |
| Jane Eyre | Northern England, mainly Thornfield Hall |
| Middlemarch | The fictional English town of Middlemarch |
| A Tale of Two Cities | London and Paris, during the French Revolution |
| Ivanhoe | 12th-century England, under Richard I |
| The Picture of Dorian Gray | Victorian London |
Sources
- Plot and setting summaries cross-checked against standard literary reference guides and the public-domain texts of each novel.
- Frankenstein’s frame narrative (the Arctic sea captain Robert Walton): Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, Letters 1 to 4.
- Middlemarch’s fictional setting: George Eliot’s subtitle, A Study of Provincial Life, and the novel’s own descriptions of the town.
Related puzzles
First-Line Challenge: Name the Public-Domain Classic
Fifteen real opening lines from novels old enough to be in the public domain. Some are instantly recognizable; a few hide a famous title behind an unremarkable first sentence.