Posted on Saturday, 6 May 2000
Pride and Prejudice is known for its legendary opening line. But imagine how it might have started out if some other authors of famous first lines had offered Jane Austen a helping hand...
Pride and Prejudice as told by
Louisa May Alcott (from Little Women)
"A ball won't be a ball without any partners," grumbled Lizzy, lying on the rug.
Frank L. Baum (from The Wonderful Wizard of OZ)
Elizabeth lived in the midst of the great Hertfordshire prairies, with Mr. Bennet, who was a gentleman, and Mrs. Bennet, who was the gentleman's wife.
Emily Brontë (from Wuthering Heights)
1801-- I have just returned from a visit to my neighbor -- the single neighbor of good fortune that I shall be troubled with.
Lewis Carroll (from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland)
Mary was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and of having nothing to do: once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no morals or maxims in it, "and what is the use of a book," thought Mary "without morals or maxims?"
Willa Cather (from My Ántonia)
I first heard of Elizabeth on what seemed to me an interminable journey across the great midland streets of Meryton.
Charles Dickens (from A Christmas Carol)
Bingley was single, to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that.
Fyodor Dostoevsky (from The Brothers Karamazov)
Fitzwilliam Darcy was the only son of George Darcy, a landowner well known in our district in his own day, and still remembered among us owing to his gloomy and tragic death, which happened six years ago, and which I shall describe in its proper place.
Daphne du Maurier (from Rebecca)
Last night I dreamt I went to Pemberley again.
George Eliot (from Middlemarch)
Miss Bennet had that kind of beauty which seems to be thrown into relief by muddy dress.
D. H. Lawrence (from Women In Love)
Jane and Elizabeth Bennet sat one morning in the window-bay of their father's house at Longbourn, working and talking.
Jack London (from The Call of the Wild)
Mr. Bennet did not read the newspapers or he would have known that trouble was brewing, not alone for himself, but for every man, father of unmarried daughters and with a persistant wife, from Longbourn to Meryton.
Herman Melville (from Moby Dick)
Call me Lizzy.
Margaret Mitchell (from Gone with the Wind)
Elizabeth Bennet was not beautiful, but men seldom realized it when caught by her charm as Darcy was.
Vladimir Nabokov (from Lolita)
Lizzy, light of my life, fire of my loin.
J. D. Salinger (from The Catcher in the Rye)
If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth universally acknowledged.
Robert Louis Stevenson (from The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde)
Mr. Darcy the gentleman was a man of a rugged countenance, that was never lighted by a smile; cold, scanty and embarrassed in discourse; backward in sentiment; lean, long, dusty, dreary and yet somehow lovable
Mark Twain (from The Adventures of Tom Sawyer)
"LIZZY!"
The originals of all these first lines (and lots more!) can be read here. I chose some of the most famous or easiest to adapt for my purpose, but I bet some of your creative minds can do a whole lot better!
The End.