In what ways does the opening of a novel relate to the narrative that unfolds from it? What are the different approaches to close reading a page of prose fiction? How does reading a text for a second time affect our understanding of the significance of its opening? In this unique book, Peter Childs discusses the opening lines of 24 widely-studied literary texts from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries. These analyses amount to both an overview of modes of fiction over the last 300 years and also a guide to techniques of close reading. The extracts are taken from the work of novelists ranging from Jane Austen to Salman Rushdie. This stimulating and illuminating book will be a useful text for undergraduates studying the novel and involved in critical appreciation and close textual analysis. Texts discussed: _Robinson Crusoe_, _Tristram Shandy_, _Pride and Prejudice_, _Frankenstein_, _Jane Eyre_, _Wuthering Heights_, _Great Expectations_, _Silas Marner_, _Tess of the D'urbervilles_, _The Turn of the Screw_, _Heart of Darkness_, _The Good Soldier_, _A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man_, _The Life and Death of Harriet Frean_, _A Passage to India_, _Mrs Dalloway_, _Brave New World_, _The Road to Wigan Pier_, _Goodbye to Berlin_, _Under the Volcano_, _Wide Sargasso Sea_, _The Bloody Chamber_, _Shame_ and _The Buddha of Suburbia_.