Read from the introduction of Narrative Beginnings: Theories and Practices edited by Brian Richardson:

"The beginning is a foundational element of any narrative, fictional or nonfictional, public or private, official or subversive. The full importance of beginnings, however, has long been neglected or misunderstood and is only recently becoming known. Currently, only a handful of studies address this surprisingly rich and elusive subject. Others, many of them represented in this volume, are now starting to give beginnings the historical, theoretical, and ideological analysis they require.

This critical and theoretical neglect is particularly surprising given the power beginnings possess for the act of reading. There is no doubt that even casual readers remember for decades salient beginning sentences, as the following memorable openings confirm: "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife"; "Call me Ishmael"; "All happy families resemble one another, but each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way"; "Longtemps, je me suis couché de bonne heur"; "Mrs Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself"; "I am an invisible man"; "Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins." Such a list (which could be extended considerably) attests to the conceptual and emotional power concentrated in resonant opening lines of works that move us. Or even that no longer move us: although Camus is rapidly falling out of the canon, the first words of The Stranger continue to reverberate: "Aujourd'hui, maman est morte.""

To read a longer excerpt or to purchase Narrative Beginnings, visit: http://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/product/Narrative-Beginnings,673979.aspx