One Line to Rule Them All: Vote Now to Crown a Champion!
And then there were two! It’s time to crown a champion of our 2024 literary bracket. We started with 64 great opening lines and now we’re down to just those from Pride and Prejudice and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. Jane Austen and C.S. Lewis. Who will win? That’s up to you. Vote now to make your voice heard.
The Final Matchup
“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.”
from Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
vs.
“There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it.”
from The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C.S. Lewis
This might have been the hardest decision I made this week
Whoa, looks like a potential upset - P&P's is surely the Citizen Kane of opening lines.
Poor Eustace (and his vegetarian parents) the butt of an absolutely great one-liner. The personality of the narrator comes so clearly through that opening sentence and chapter - even though I don't like that narrator.
In P&P the opening line captures perfectly the ironic tone of the best novel of the best novelist.