Throw me a line
To expand upon the note with which I ended my last post, how many of these First Lines can you identify by book and author?
1. There was a man named Lessingham dwelt in an old low house in Wastdale, set in a gray old garden where yew-trees flourished that had seen Vikings in Copeland in their seedling time.
2. The only possible excuse for this book is that it is an answer to a challenge.
3. I am old now and have not much to fear from the anger of the gods.
4. The free state of Dorimare was a very small country, but, seeing that it was bounded on the south by the sea and on the north and east by mountains, while its centre consisted of a rich plain, watered by two rivers, a considerable variety of scenery and vegetation was to be found within its borders.
5. In the sea, once upon a time, O my Best Beloved, there was a Whale, and he ate fishes.
6. Marley was dead, to begin with.
7. As I walked through the wilderness of this world I lighted on a certain place where was a den, and laid me down in that place to sleep; and, as I slept, I dreamed a dream.
8. I had this story from one who had no business to tell it to me, or to any other.
9. I suppose that very few casual readers of the New York Herald of August 13, 1863, observed, in an obscure corner, among the “Deaths,” the announcement:— “NOLAN. Died, on board U.S. Corvette Levant, Lat. 2° 11’ S. Long. 131° W., on the 11th of May, PHILIP NOLAN.”
10. The island of Gont, a single mountain that lifts its peak a mile above the storm-racked Northeast Sea, is a land famous for wizards.
Answers below the cut.
1. The Worm Ouroboros, E.R. Eddison
2. Orthodoxy, G.K. Chesterton
3. Till We Have Faces, C.S. Lewis
4. Lud-in-the-Mist, Hope Mirrlees
5. Just So Stories, Rudyard Kipling
6. A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens
7. Pilgrim's Progress, John Bunyan
8. Tarzan of the Apes, Edgar Rice Burroughs
9. The Man Without a Country, Edward Everett Hale
10. A Wizard of Earthsea, Ursula K. LeGuin
1. There was a man named Lessingham dwelt in an old low house in Wastdale, set in a gray old garden where yew-trees flourished that had seen Vikings in Copeland in their seedling time.
2. The only possible excuse for this book is that it is an answer to a challenge.
3. I am old now and have not much to fear from the anger of the gods.
4. The free state of Dorimare was a very small country, but, seeing that it was bounded on the south by the sea and on the north and east by mountains, while its centre consisted of a rich plain, watered by two rivers, a considerable variety of scenery and vegetation was to be found within its borders.
5. In the sea, once upon a time, O my Best Beloved, there was a Whale, and he ate fishes.
6. Marley was dead, to begin with.
7. As I walked through the wilderness of this world I lighted on a certain place where was a den, and laid me down in that place to sleep; and, as I slept, I dreamed a dream.
8. I had this story from one who had no business to tell it to me, or to any other.
9. I suppose that very few casual readers of the New York Herald of August 13, 1863, observed, in an obscure corner, among the “Deaths,” the announcement:— “NOLAN. Died, on board U.S. Corvette Levant, Lat. 2° 11’ S. Long. 131° W., on the 11th of May, PHILIP NOLAN.”
10. The island of Gont, a single mountain that lifts its peak a mile above the storm-racked Northeast Sea, is a land famous for wizards.
Answers below the cut.
1. The Worm Ouroboros, E.R. Eddison
2. Orthodoxy, G.K. Chesterton
3. Till We Have Faces, C.S. Lewis
4. Lud-in-the-Mist, Hope Mirrlees
5. Just So Stories, Rudyard Kipling
6. A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens
7. Pilgrim's Progress, John Bunyan
8. Tarzan of the Apes, Edgar Rice Burroughs
9. The Man Without a Country, Edward Everett Hale
10. A Wizard of Earthsea, Ursula K. LeGuin