Novel Beginnings - Random Trivia Questions

Edward Bulwer-Lytton's 1830 novel Paul Clifford begins, "It was a dark and stormy night", and Charles Schulz popularized the phrase by having Snoopy hunt and paw it on his typewriter. Who penned these memorable opening lines and in what novels? Bonus: what is hidden among the answers?

Novel Beginnings Questions

• Q1) On the pleasant shore of the French Riviera, about half way between Marseilles and the Italian border, stands a large, proud, rose-colored hotel.
• Q2) One minute it was Ohio winter, with doors closed, windows locked, the panes blind with frost, icicles fringing every roof, children skiing on slopes, housewives lumbering like great black bears in their furs along the icy streets.
• Q3) Early in the spring of 1750, in the village of Juffure, four days upriver from the coast of The Gambia, West Africa, a manchild was born to Omoro and Binta Kinte.
• Q4) For many years it was my good fortune to witness, chronicle, and in some instances assist my friend, Mr. Sherlock Holmes, in a number of cases which were submitted to him in his unique capacity as a consulting detective.
• Q5) Call me Jonah.
• Q6) "Where's Papa going with that ax?" said Fern to her mother as they were setting the table for breakfast.
• Q7) A throng of bearded men in sad-colored garments and gray, steeple-crowned hats, intermixed with women, some wearing hoods, and other bareheaded, was assembled in front of a wooden edifice, the door of which was heavily timbered with oak, and studded with iron spikes.
• Q8) The driver of the wagon swaying through forest and swamp of the Ohio wilderness was a ragged girl of fourteen.
• Q9) When Farmer Oak smiled, the corners of his mouth spread till they were within an unimportant distance of his ears, his eyes were reduced to chinks, and diverging wrinkles appeared round them, extending upon his countenance like the rays in a rudimentary sketch of the rising sun.
• Q10) Selden paused in surprise. In the afternoon rush of the Grand Central Station his eyes had been refreshed by the sight of Miss Lily Bart.
• Q11) His name was Gaal Dornick and he was just a country boy who had never seen Trantor before.
• Q12) There was death at its beginning as there would be death again at its end.