Harriet Jacobs
1861 · North Carolina, USA
Reader be assured this narrative is no fiction. I am aware that some of my adventures may seem incredible; but they are, nevertheless, strictly true.
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, preface
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Miguel de Cervantes
1605 · Spain
Idle reader: you may believe me without my swearing it that I would wish this book, as the child of my understanding, to be the most beautiful, the most gallant and the most clever that could be imagined.
Desocupado lector: sin juramento me podrás creer que quisiera que este libro, como hijo del entendimiento, fuera el más hermoso, el más gallardo y más discreto que pudiera imaginarse.
Don Quixote, part 1, prologue
Charles Dickens
1850 · London, England
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.
David Copperfield, the first sentence
Oscar Wilde
1895 · Ireland · Britain · Of the three-volume novel she wrote when young
The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what Fiction means.
The Importance of Being Earnest, Act 2, spoken by Miss Prism
1 in 100 Billion · The social network of those who came before us