Rating Austen’s first lines (this is a rating of the lines, not the books) (rated based on my thoughts of when I read them for the first time, unaware of what happens later)
1. Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition, seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence; and had lived nearly twenty-one years in the world with very little to distress or vex her. — Emma
Iconic. Makes you wanna be her in just one paragraph.
2. No one who had ever seen Catherine Morland in her infancy, would have supposed her born to be an heroine. — Northanger Abbey
I love this one, I don’t know why
3. A gentleman and a lady travelling from Tunbridge towards that part of the Sussex coast which lies between Hastings and Eastbourne, being induced by business to quit the high road and attempt a very rough lane, were overturned in toiling up its long ascent, half rock, half sand. — Sanditon
4. It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife. — Pride & Prejudice
5. The family of Dashwood had long been settled in Sussex. — Sense & Sensibility
6. The first winter assembly in the town of D. in Surrey was to be held on Tuesday, October 13th and it was generally expected to be a very good one. — The Watsons
7. About thirty years ago Miss Maria Ward, of Huntingdon, with only seven thousand pounds, had the good luck to captivate Sir Thomas Bertram, of Mansfield Park, in the county of Northampton, and to be thereby raised to the rank of a baronet's lady, with all the comforts and consequences of an handsome house and large income. — Mansfield Park
8. My dear brother,—I can no longer refuse myself the pleasure of profiting by your kind invitation when we last parted of spending some weeks with you at Churchhill, and, therefore, if quite convenient to you and Mrs. Vernon to receive me at present, I shall hope within a few days to be introduced to a sister whom I have so long desired to be acquainted with. — Lady Susan
9. Sir Walter Elliot, of Kellynch Hall, in Somerset, was a man who, for his own amusement, never took up any book but the Baronetage; there he found occupation for an idle hour, and consolation in a distressed one; there his faculties were roused into admiration and respect, by contemplating the limited remnant of the earliest patents; there any unwelcome sensations, arising from domestic affairs, changed naturally into pity and contempt as he turned over the almost endless creations of the last century; and there, if every other leaf were powerless, he could read his own history with an interest which never failed. — Persuasion
Didn’t ask about Sir Walter Elliot’s passion for monarchy.
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romaincrisis
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