First Lines by Nancy Eady

            One of the most prevalent pieces of writing advice I’ve heard for those of us who wish to be published is to pull your reader into the story immediately. I am still working on learning how to do that, so I skimmed through some of the first lines of books that I’ve read. Can you match the first line or phrase below with the correct book?

1)         “Christmas won’t be Christmas without any presents,” grumbled Jo, lying on the rug.

2)         In the second century of the Christian era, the Empire of Rome comprehended the fairest part of the earth, and the most civilized portion of mankind.

3)         It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.

4)         As I walked through the wilderness of this world, I lighted on a certain place where was a den, and I laid me down in that place to sleep; and as I slept, I dreamed a dream.

5)         In a hole in a ground, there lived a hobbit.

6)         When Mr. Bilbo Baggins of Bag End announced that he would shortly be celebrating his eleventy-first birthday with a party of special magnificence, there was much talk and excitement in Hobbiton.

7)         There was no possibility of taking a walk that day.

8)         It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way – in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

9)         It was five o'clock on a winter's morning in Syria.

10)       In my younger and more vulnerable years, my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since.

11)       One summer evening in the year 1848, three Cardinals and a missionary Bishop from America were dining together in the gardens of a villa in the Sabine hills, overlooking Rome.

12)       On the first Monday of the month of April, 1625, the market town of Meung, in which the author of Romance of the Rose was born, appeared to be in as perfect a state of revolution as if the Huguenots had just made a second La Rochelle of it.

13)       The Jebel es Zubleh is a mountain fifty miles and more in length, and so narrow that its tracery on the map gives it a likeness to a caterpillar crawling from the south to the north.

14)       In the corner of a first-class smoking carriage, Mr. Justice Wargrave, lately retired from the bench, puffed at a cigar and ran an interested eye through the political news in the Times.

15)       Petronius woke only about midday, and as usual greatly wearied.

            How do you think you did?  What is your favorite first line of a book?

A)        Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

B)        The Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan

C)        The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas

D)        Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

E)        Ben-Hur:  A Tale of the Christ by Lew Wallace

F)         Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

G)        The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon

H)        The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien

I)         And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie

J)         Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather

K)        Quo Vadis by Henryk Sienkiewicz

L)        The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien

M)       A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

N)        Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie

O)        The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Answers:  1) F, 2) G. 3) D, 4) B, 5) H, 6) L, 7) A, 8) M, 9) N, 10) O, 11) J, 12) C, 13) E, 14) I, 15) K.