Comment
A charming 24pp booklet containing a selection of striking first lines from books and stories Brian Aldiss has read throughout his life. Authors represented range from Virginia Wolfe to Aldiss himself, Harry Harrison to Sir Thomas Brown.

Brian says

This selection of famous first words owes its existence to a lifetime of random reading. Writers have many ways of inviting us into their books and stories; we read there, if not their characters, their designs.

I offer grateful thanks to the authors who happen to find themselves rubbing shoulders with each other here, for their cleverness, and for the pleasure they have given, both to the world at large and, we hope, to themselves. (Fromthe editor’s note)

FIRST EDITION: Postcard Partnership, 1975