THE ART OF THE EPIGRAPH: HOW GREAT BOOKS BEGIN By Rosemary Ahern


You guessed it: I’m a sucker for a book like The Art of the Epigraph. Rosemary Ahern collects 250 examples of the quotations, song lyrics, invented snippets, and jokes that launch some of our greatest books. Ahern organizes the epigraphs by themes: Life, Tell the Truth, Love, The River of Time, etc. If your favorite writers include Flaubert, Edith Wharton, Virginia Woolf, Patti Smith, George Eliot, Vladimir Nabokov, C. S. Lewis, Lorrie Moore, Samuel Johnson, Karl Marx, Susan Sontag, and Mary Higgins Clark you’ll really enjoy this book. I did. GRADE: A

4 thoughts on “THE ART OF THE EPIGRAPH: HOW GREAT BOOKS BEGIN By Rosemary Ahern

  1. Deb

    I, too, love books like this. I always read epigraphs and have actually discovered other writers and works through them. Many years ago, I was quoting the line “Behind every great fortune is a great crime” (Balzac?), which was something I think I’d heard Alistair Cooke say on “Masterpiece Theatre”, and without missing a beat my mother shot back, “Oh, that was the on the opening page of The Godfather.”

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