{"id":43137,"date":"2025-06-30T06:30:28","date_gmt":"2025-06-29T18:30:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/?p=43137"},"modified":"2025-06-29T20:29:13","modified_gmt":"2025-06-29T08:29:13","slug":"celebrating-book-openings-5-1984-by-george-orwell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/2025\/06\/30\/celebrating-book-openings-5-1984-by-george-orwell\/","title":{"rendered":"Celebrating Book Openings #5: “1984” by George Orwell"},"content":{"rendered":"

“It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.”<\/span><\/span><\/em><\/span><\/h3>\n

~ 1984<\/em>, by George Orwell, 1903 – 1950<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Having featured Wifedom: The Invisible Life of Mrs Orwell<\/em> on Monday 16<\/strong><\/a>, I had<\/em> to feature the opening line from George Orwell’s 1984<\/em><\/strong> as my next opening line.<\/p>\n

I believe it may be among the most famous opening lines in English literature. It’s also exceedingly powerful, simultaneously grounding the reader in the reality of a “bright cold day in April”, with all the hope that spring month implies, and striking the discordant — yet also intriguing — note of clocks sounding a thirteenth hour.<\/p>\n

Are we hooked? Yes, I believe we definitely are. Is it genius? Again, I think that’s a yes.<\/p>\n

Preceding \u201cGreat Openings\u201d Posts:<\/h4>\n

#1 Moby Dick<\/a>
\n#2 Anna Karenina<\/a>
\n#3 A Tale Of Two Cities<\/a>
\n#4 Pride and Prejudice<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.” ~ 1984, by George Orwell, 1903 – 1950 Having featured Wifedom: The Invisible Life of Mrs Orwell on Monday 16, I had to feature the opening line from George Orwell’s 1984 as my next opening line. I believe it may be […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50,19,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-43137","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-about-writing","category-funstuff","category-other-writers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43137","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43137"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43137\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43160,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43137\/revisions\/43160"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43137"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43137"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43137"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}