Sentence No. 45 · 11 May 2026
To begin my life with the beginning of my life, I record that I was born (as I have been informed and believe) on a Friday, at twelve o’clock at night.
Charles Dickens, David Copperfield
Charles Dickens — David Copperfield (1850) · Read it at Project Gutenberg
What holds this sentence together
The infinitive phrase "To begin my life with the beginning of my life" is a fronted purpose clause — it can never be the sentence's end. Whenever you see a "To + verb" phrase opening a sentence, the main subject-verb pair ("I record") always follows it.
How it appears in Sentle
On Sentle this sentence arrives in 8 pieces, shuffled, with the lines that lead up to it for context. David Copperfield opens with one of the most direct and personal first lines in Victorian fiction. Putting it back in the author’s order is the puzzle — and the order is rarely arbitrary, which is what the note above is about.
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