Some opening sentences are so memorable they have become part of literary history. From sweeping adventures and timeless romances to thought-provoking masterpieces, these famous first lines have captivated readers for generations.

Test your literary knowledge in our quiz about the opening lines of classic novels. Your challenge is simple: can you identify the book – and perhaps even the author – from just a few carefully chosen words?

1. Call me Ishmael.

2. It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.

3. It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.

4. Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road and this moocow that was coming down along the road met a nicens little boy named baby tuckoo.

5. He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish.

6. In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since.

7. It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn’t know what I was doing in New York.

8. It was a pleasure to burn.

9. Before you fairly start this story, I should like to give you just a word of warning … Not one of the seven is really good, for the very excellent reason that Australian children never are.

10. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair…

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Answers:

1. Moby Dick by Herman Melville 2. 1984 by George Orwell 3. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen 4. Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce 5. The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway 6. The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald 7. The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath 8. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury 9. Seven Little Australians by Ethel Turner 10. A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens