The Secret Dreamworld of a Jane Austen Fan

”It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife”. That is probably one of (if not the) most famous opening sentences ever. We all know where it comes from, and it’s been quoted again and again and again.
I was thinking about it the other day, and the opening sentences from the other Jane Austen books (yes, I know, strange things you think about at times…). They are all well known, or at least in these circles they are, even if no other is quite as famous as those first lines of Pride and Prejudice.

So I was thinking about that and suddenly felt curious about what other opening sentences there are. So I pulled out a bunch of classics from my shelf and started flicking open the pages to the first chapter. And I quickly discovered that although I am very familiar with how Jane Austen’s book begins, I hardly knew any other.

Here are a few of the ones I looked at.

“There was no possibility of taking a walk that day”

“Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show”

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

“Miss Brooke had that kind of beauty which seems to be thrown into relief by poor dress”

“Edith!’ said Margaret gently, ‘Edith!”

And here is a long one:

“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 in the direction of 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 comparisons only”

And an even longer:

“Mrs. Rachel Lynde lived just where the Avonlea main road dipped down into a little hollow, fringed with alders and ladies’ eardrops and traversed by a brook that had its source away back in the woods of the old Cuthbert place; it was reputed to be an intricate, headlong brook in its earlier course through these woods, with dark secrets of pool and cascade; but by the time it reached Lynde’s Hollow it was a quiet, well-conducted little stream, for not even a brook could run past Mrs. Rachel Lynde’s door without due regard for decency and decorum; it probably was conscious that Mrs. Rachel was sitting at her window, keeping a sharp eye on everything that passed, from brooks and children up, and that if she noticed anything odd or out of place she would never rest until she had ferreted out the whys and wherefores thereof.”

“On the first Monday on the month of April, 1625, the small town of Meung, the birthplace of the author of the ‘Romance of the Rose’, appeared to be in the state of revolution, as complete as if the Huguenots were come to make a second siege of La Rochelle.”

“The signora had no business to do it’ said Miss Bartlett, ‘no business at all.”

“While the present century was in its teens, and one sunshiny morning in June, there drove up to the great iron gate of Miss Pinkerton’s academy for young ladies, on Chiswick Mall, a large family coach, with two fat horses in blazing harness, driven by a fat coachman in a three-cornered hat and wig, at the rate of four miles an hour.”

“Once upon a time sixty years ago, a little girl lived in the Big Woods of Wisconsin, in a little gray house made of logs”

“1801 – I have just returned from a visit to my landlord – the solitary neighbour that I shall be troubled with”

Why don’t you leave me a comment and let me know if you recognize any of them!