ABSTRACT
There is a game that is available from the Bodleian Library in Oxford called Ex Libris. The box contains a pack of cards and an old, polished, halfpenny bit. On each of the cards is a reÂsume of a novel and the author's dates, and on the other side of the card is the first and last lines of that novel. The person in the game who is the `reader' throws the coin, declares whether it is heads or tails, and then reads out the reÂsumeÂ. Each player then attempts to write the first line of the novel if `heads' were shown, or the last line if it were `tails'. The reader collects in the literary attempts of the group and reads them out, including the real sentence from the card, and the players then vote for the sentence that they believe to be the correct one. People earn points when their sentence is chosen, or when they choose the true author, and thus the game goes on, with ever more subtle attempts to fox your opponents with ingenious attempts at characteristic literary styles. How does Frankenstein end, exactly? You look around the room, weighing up your erstwhile friends and their reading proclivities. How might you capture a particular Victorian gothic that will convince your readers that yours is the proper ending? A really skilful player is able to out-do the original. To sound more like Jane Austen than Jane Austen herself as you write the first sentence of Pride and Prejudice is success indeed.
