Line 1
“Mrs. Ferrars died on the night of the 16th–17th September—a Thursday.”
“Every crease is a story.”
Opening Lines #67 · Tuesday, 6 October 2026
Five first sentences from public-domain classics. Which book does each one open?
Replaying an archived puzzle. Play today’s
Line 1
“Mrs. Ferrars died on the night of the 16th–17th September—a Thursday.”
Line 2
“‘Now, what I want is, Facts.’”
Line 3
“It is a curious thing that at my age—fifty-five last birthday—I should find myself taking up a pen to try to write a history.”
Line 4
“Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed.”
Line 5
“‘Edith!’ said Margaret, gently, ‘Edith!’”
Archive · Your stats · First lines are from works published before 1930.
Read the opening sentence and choose the novel it belongs to. Look for the narrator, setting and tone as clues. A remembered first sentence can help, but a line can also be a starting point for finding a new book to read.
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