First Lines

[parelle]

Now, instead of working...to continue with the first-line memes, here are some classic first-lines. I've tried to avoid ones which 'give it away' - so no, there is no Pride and Prejudice here! As a hint, these are all books I read while growing up (though they aren't all child's lit) and all of them can be found on Gutenberg (so if you haven't read them, why not?)

1. No one who had ever seen Catherine Morland in her infancy would have supposed her born to be an heroine.
2. "Christmas won't be Christmas without any presents," grumbled Jo, lying on the rug.
3. He sat, in defiance of municipal orders, astride the gun Zam Zammah on her brick platform opposite the old Ajaib-Gher - the Wonder House, as the natives call the Lahore Museum.
4. On the first Monday of the month of April, 1625, the market town of Meung, in which the author of ROMANCE OF THE ROSE was born, appeared to be in as perfect a state of revolution as if the Huguenots had just made a second La Rochelle of it.
5. Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.
6. There was no possibility of taking a walk that day.  We had been wandering, indeed, in the leafless shrubbery an hour in the morning; but since dinner (Mrs. Reed, when there was no company, dined early) the cold winter wind had brought with it clouds so sombre, and a rain so penetrating, that further out-door exercise was now out of the question.
7. I will begin the story of my adventures with a certain morning early in the month of June, the year of grace 1751, when I took the key for the last time out of the door of my father's house.
   
8. The Mole had been working very hard all the morning, spring-cleaning his little home.
9. It was the evening on which MM.  Debienne and Poligny, the managers of the Opera, were giving a last gala performance to mark their retirement.
10. "The Signora had no business to do it," said Miss Bartlett, "no business at all. She promised us south rooms with a view close together, instead of which here are north rooms, looking into a courtyard, and a long way apart. Oh, Lucy!"
    

1. Northanger Abbey, Jane Austen
2. Little Women, Louisa May Alcott
3. Kim, Rudyard Kipling
4. The Three Musketeers, Alexandre Dumas pere
5. David Copperfield, Charles Dickens
6. Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte
7. Kidnapped, Robert Louis Stevenson
   
8. The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame
9. The Phantom of the Opera, Gaston Leroux
10. A Room with a View, E.M. Forster