What Is an Epigraph?
Quick answer: An epigraph is a short quotation placed at the start of a book, chapter or story to set tone or theme. How epigraphs work, famous examples and permission rules.
An epigraph is a short quotation, phrase or motto placed at the beginning of a book, chapter or story, before the text proper begins. Drawn from another writer, a song, scripture, a proverb or even an invented source, it sits on its own page or above the first line and frames what follows: announcing a theme, setting a tone, or striking a spark between the borrowed words and the story to come.
It is worth knowing precisely because it is so often confused with its near-twins. An epigraph is not an epigram (a witty short saying), not an epitaph (words on a tomb), and not an epilogue (a closing section). One quotation at the front door: that is the whole device, and it can do surprising work.
The longer answer: what an epigraph actually does
The obvious function is thematic: the epigraph tells the reader what lens to hold. But the device is subtler than a label. Because the quotation precedes the story, readers carry it through every page, testing scenes against it, and the meaning of the pairing often only completes at the ending. A good epigraph is less a summary than a tuning fork; the book gradually comes into resonance with it.
Epigraphs also borrow authority and company. Quoting Dante before a thriller places the book, cheekily or earnestly, in a longer conversation. This is why the device flourished in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when novels were still arguing for their own seriousness, and why a perfectly chosen epigraph can still make a debut feel anchored.
And sometimes the epigraph is a game. Writers have invented sources wholesale: attributing solemn quotations to books that do not exist, or to characters inside the novel itself. Frank Herbert's Dune opens its chapters with excerpts from imaginary histories written by a character, turning the apparatus of scholarship into worldbuilding. The invented epigraph signals that even the book's frame is part of the fiction.
Famous epigraphs and what they teach
E. M. Forster gave Howards End (1910) perhaps the shortest famous epigraph in English: 'Only connect...'. Two words, and the novel spends three hundred pages testing them. The lesson: an epigraph need not explain; it needs to concentrate.
Ernest Hemingway opened The Sun Also Rises (1926) with two epigraphs set against each other: Gertrude Stein's remark branding his generation lost, answered by a long passage from Ecclesiastes about the earth abiding forever. The friction between the two is the novel's whole argument in miniature. The lesson: two quotations can debate, and the book becomes the verdict.
Herman Melville pushed the device to its limit in Moby-Dick (1851), prefacing the novel with pages of whale quotations gathered by a fictional sub-sub-librarian. It is excessive on purpose, a comic overture about obsession before the obsessive story begins. The lesson: the apparatus around a story can perform the story's theme.
Choosing and using one in your own work
Ask what the quotation does that your opening page cannot. If the epigraph merely repeats the book's message, cut it; the strongest choices add an angle, an irony or a promise the text will spend itself fulfilling. A horror novel under a nursery rhyme, a war story under a recipe: dissonance is often worth more than agreement.
Then face the unglamorous part: permissions. Quotation in epigraphs is not automatically fair use, and song lyrics are the strictest case of all, since rights holders charge for even a line. Work published before 1928 is public domain in the United States and safe; for anything newer, plan to request permission from the rights holder or choose differently. Scripture, proverbs and your own invented sources are permission-free.
Practical mechanics: place it after the title page (or under a chapter heading for chapter epigraphs), set it in italics or smaller type, attribute author and work, and resist annotating it. The epigraph should be the last thing in the book you explain. If it needs a footnote, it needs replacing.
Common mistakes
The commonest is decoration: a quotation chosen because it sounds profound rather than because it converses with the story. Readers notice when the borrowed gravity never gets spent. If nothing in the book would change by deleting the epigraph, deleting it is the correct edit.
The second is over-supply. An epigraph before every chapter can be a pleasure in a long novel with strong design, but in a short work the scaffolding outweighs the building. Short stories rarely need epigraphs at all; in a 2,000-word piece the borrowed voice can drown your own before it starts.
The third is legal optimism, assuming attribution equals permission. Attribution answers plagiarism; permission answers copyright; an epigraph needs both questions settled. Publishers will ask, so debut writers should keep records of sources and clearances from the first draft onward.
What poets can take from this
- Choose an epigraph that argues with your story, not one that summarises it.
- Check the date: pre-1928 sources spare you the permissions maze entirely.
- Never quote song lyrics without written permission; paraphrase or choose scripture, proverb or public domain instead.
- For short stories, default to no epigraph unless the pairing is irresistible.
- Reread your epigraph after finishing the final chapter; the ending should make it land twice.
Try it yourself
Write a 400-word story that earns a two-word epigraph, then write the epigraph yourself and attribute it to an invented source, a ship's log, a lost etiquette manual, a future textbook. Make the invented attribution do worldbuilding the story never states.
Questions
What is the difference between an epigraph and an epigram?
An epigraph is a quotation placed at the start of a book or chapter; an epigram is a short witty saying complete in itself, in prose or verse. An epigram can serve as an epigraph, which is exactly how the confusion started.
Do you need permission to use a quote as an epigraph?
Often, yes. Public-domain sources (published before 1928 in the US) are free to quote; newer material generally needs the rights holder's permission, and song lyrics are enforced most aggressively. Attribution alone does not settle copyright.
Can an epigraph be made up?
Yes, and it is a respected tradition. Writers from Walter Scott onward have attributed epigraphs to invented books and characters, and Frank Herbert's Dune builds its historical texture from imaginary chapter epigraphs. Invented sources are permission-free and can deepen the fiction.
By the Writory editorial team, reviewed by working poets. Updated July 2026.
Enter a Writory poetry contest
Enter the August contest and have your own poem read and scored.