Love At First Sight/Literature

Examples of Love At First Sight in Literature include:

Happens to Kim Ward and Jelka Tolonen in David Wingrove's Chung Kuo series.
The two protagonists of Anthem, Equality and Liberty, fall in love the second they meet.
In Five Hundred Years After, Aliera and Mario fall in love almost immediately, despite him being an assassin fleeing after attempting to kill the Emperor. However, this may be Paarfi's embellishment.
In Sandy Mitchell's Warhammer 40,000 novel For the Emperor, Ciaphas Cain describes his first meeting with Amberley Vail. He declares he's never believed in Love At First Sight, but he can still remember (decades later) every detail about her from that first meeting.
A humorous version in the latest book of the Wheel of Time, in which Berelain (The Vamp, who seduces people for political advantage) and Galad (an exaggeration of the Knight in Shining Armor) both fall head-over-heels on their first meeting. This leads to many entertaining scenes, especially as both of them are presented earlier as cool-headed and in control.
Harry Potter crushes on Cho the instant he sees her during a Quiddich match in his third year. Of course, it doesn't last...
- Not to mention Ginny Weasley's reaction to Harry from the moment she meets him. That one sticks.
- Nine-year-old Severus Snape seems completely entranced by little Lily Evans from the moment he lays eyes on her.
  - Though in this instance it seems unclear whether the scene is actually the first time they've seen each other. Petunia points him out to her sister as 'that Snape boy from Spinner's End', and with a judgmental air... this means there has been some interaction before, even if he was only pointed out to them, but it is memorable enough that they recognize him. Some of his dialogue also implies he has seen her before he actually had the opportunity to speak to her.
Marius and Cosette in Les Misérables, to a truly ridiculous (and obnoxious) extent.
- In the musical, their courtship amounts to about 10 minutes of total time onstage together before their marriage.
In Dan Abnett's Gaunt's Ghosts novel The Guns of Tanith, Milo, reflecting on his not present love, considers Caffran and Cridd and their sweet romance, even though neither of them would describe it as love as first sight. (From their actual meetings in Necropolis, they might be wrong not to do so.)
In James Thurber's The 13 Clocks, Prince Zorn and Princess Saralinda. It quite annoys her uncle, the wicked duke.
In G. K. Chesterton's Tales of the Long Bow, Owen Hood habitually fishes a certain location in hopes of meeting again a woman he had met only once:

Years before, when he was a very young man, he had sat fishing on that island one evening as the twilight bands turned to dark, and two or three broad bands of silver were all that was left of the sunset behind the darkening trees. The birds were dropping out of the sky and there was no noise except the soft noises of the river. Suddenly, and without a sound, as comes a veritable vision, a girl had come out of the woods opposite. She spoke to him across the stream, asking him he hardly knew what, which he answered he hardly knew how. She was dressed in white and carried a bunch of bluebells loose in her hand; her hair in a straight fringe of gold was low on her forehead; she was pale like ivory, and her pale eyelids had a sort of flutter as of nervous emotion.

Parodied in the Discworld novel Sourcery, where Nijel and Conina first meet: "The world had suddenly separated into two parts -- the bit which contained Nijel and Conina, and the bit which contained everything else. The air between them crackled. Probably, in their half, a distant orchestra was playing, bluebirds were tweeting, little pink clouds were barrelling through the sky, and all the other things that happen at times like this."
Tom Sawyer to Becky in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. This had obvious parallels with the way Mark Twain himself fell for his wife, which is subtly noted in The Adventures of Mark Twain stop-motion film.
Very common in Henryk Sienkiewicz's works, including Quo Vadis and his Trilogy though notably averted in the Darker and Edgier last book of the Trilogy, Pan Wolodyjowski.
In Edgar Rice Burroughs's A Princess of Mars, John Carter (finally) realizes this.

I loved Dejah Thoris. The touch of my arm upon her naked shoulder had spoken to me in words I would not mistake, and I knew that I had loved her since the first moment that my eyes had met hers that first time in the plaza of the dead city of Korad.

From Skulduggery Pleasant, China Sorrows has the ability to make everyone she meets fall in love with her. Skulduggery says that the effects lessen over time but will never go away completely.
Hell's Gate by David Weber features one group of people with a variety of psychic talents. Voices are the most common power, and are telepathic. Recognition between telepaths is very rare, but happens enough that it is the standard for most great works of Romance and tragedy in the world. Two persons who've never met lock eyes and just suddenly are in love. But they don't know each other, and may already be married to other people.
The werewolves in the Twilight series undergoes a process called imprinting, which alludes to animals' instinctive and overpowering attachment to their young. However the effect is complicated by the fact that the werewolf can imprint on any human (in one case, a baby), and it can also happen when he or she is already in love with someone else.
- "Baby" being minutes after she's born.
  - Implied that it had already happened before she was born and that that was the reason he stayed for the entire pregnancy, and that he just mistook it for his feelings for Bella. Which is even squickier.

"Hey, Nessie, remember when I was trying to bang your mom?"

- Twilight in general takes this to... rather extreme measures at times. There's a trend in predestination amongst the couples. An example of this would be Alice, who fell in love with Jasper before first sight (she foresaw meeting him and thus went to where they'd meet).
  - Hunh. This troper always thought that it was Played for Laughs.
- Another variant: Edward falls in Love At First Smell with Bella.
In Mirror Dance, mother and son discuss father and mother's meeting:

"He thought it was love at first sight. I've never bothered explaining to him that it was his compulsions leaping up."
"Why not? Or were your compulsions leaping up too?"
"No, it took me, oh, four or five more days to come completely unglued. Well, three days, anyway."

Averted so hard in the Darkest Powers series by Chloe and Derek that it's worth mentioning. First of all, they meet in a group home for "troubled" kids, which is a code word for "mentally disturbed" ~~which is a code word for "has superpowers"~~. Derek assumes that Chloe is a flighty blonde ditz whose only point of interest is the fact that she's a necromancer, and even then only because he can use her to manipulate his brother, Simon, into finally escaping to safety. As for physical attraction, he doesn't even notice her looks (although she is legitimately cute). On Chloe's end of things, Derek is initially withdrawn, ominous, intimidating, and pretty much a Jerkass. He has also been viciously mauled by (werewolf) puberty, so his face looks like a "before" picture for acne cream, his hair is constantly greasy, lank, and dull, and the deodorant does nothing—even though he showers twice a day. Not to mention that the first time they're alone together, the interaction goes downhill, until Derek ends up throwing her across the room. It's an accident -- actually an accident, not "Why'd you make me hit you, baby?"—but Chloe doesn't know that until a few chapters later¹. At the end of the trilogy, they end up together after their relationships develops in a completely believable manner, turning out to be the complete opposite of Strangled by the Red String.
- ¹ When she does find out how he could manage to throw her across the room without putting deliberate effort into it, she accepts the explanation. It helps that she weighs maybe a 100 pounds and is only five feet tall, and he's over 220 pounds of pure muscle and roughly six-three or so.
Daren and Selenay in Mercedes Lackey's Heralds of Valdemar novels. Also Sherrill with Keren. Reportedly, this is pretty common with lifebonds.
- As a matter of fact, Talia and Dirk did this too. Dirk was the first Herald that Talia saw!
In The Tale of Genji a man doesn't have to see the girl to fall in love - fortunately as women normally hide behind curtains and screens. Just a glimpse of her perfect calligraphy will do the job nicely. Of course if he does manage to get a peek at her the results will be instantly devastating and probably lead to all kinds of complications.
In Shanna Swendson's Enchanted Inc., love at first sight cures a spell.
Most of P. G. Wodehouse's heroes do this, and spend the rest of the novel/story working through a tangle of zany schemes and mistaken identities to finally marry the girl.
- In "Bachelors Anonymous," Ivor Llewellyn has a bad habit of proposing to women during awkward silences, only to get divorced later.
- In Jill The Reckless, Derek's mother wants to meet Jill because she has learned first impressions are everything. Derek tells her he's heartily glad of that, because he fell in love at first sight.
In Robert E. Howard's "Queen of the Black Coast", Conan the Barbarian aims at Belit and then, at a whim, shoots the man next to her. As soon as she gets a look at him fighting, she announces herself in love with him.
J. R. R. Tolkien liked this one, both Beren and Aragorn were devastated by their first look at Lúthien and Arwen on The Silmarillion and Lord of the Rings, respectively. Of course Tolkien himself fell for his wife Edith when he was only sixteen, proposing marriage and being accepted literally the day after he turned twenty one.
Agatha Christie also favored this trope. Many of her short stories involve young couples deciding to marry hours and several adventures after their first meeting.
In So Long And Thanks For All The Fish, Arthur falls in love with Fenchurch the moment he sees her, asleep, in the back seat of her brother's car that he is hitchhiking on.
S.L. Viehl likes to play with this trope in various ways.
In The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde, Basil Hallward falls for Dorian when he sees him at a party, leading him to paint the titular portrait. Then Harry Wotton gets in the way and things go... poorly.
Miguel de Unamuno's novella Mist (original title: Niebla) has the main character, Augusto, fall in love with Eugenia as they pass by each other on the street. Everybody supports their relationship except for Eugenia, who is in a relationship with somebody else.
In The Sword and the Circle, Rosemary Sutcliff's retelling of the first part of the Arthurian legend, eighteen-year-old Arthur falls in love with Guinevere at first sight, though he doesn't realise it initially. Then Lancelot and Guinevere fall in love with each other the moment they accidentally touch hands and look up into each other's eyes.
Stu Redman and Frannie Goldsmith in Stephen King's The Stand...Stu told Frannie it took about three hours, but the text of the scene where they meet indicates it may have been even a bit faster.
In Edgar Rice Burroughs's The Monster Men, Number 13 falls in love with Virginia at once, though he does not fathom it. When he recovers from amnesia, he explains that he had fallen in love at a train station and chased after her across the world.
Played straight and deconstructed in L. M. Montgomery's A Tangled Web Jocelyn left her husband on her wedding night because she had fallen in Love at First Sight with the best man who leave unaware of her affection. When they met again several years after he is middle-aged, overweight man about to marry a rich widow. Jocelyn's love imminently fade away. Lucky for her that her husband didn't keep a grudge against her
In Gene Stratton Porter's Freckles, Freckles's first sight of Angel. This is sealed by her lack of fear of snakes.
In Gene Stratton Porter's The Song of the Cardinal, the cardinal had actually met the she-cardinal before, and kissed her, but the circumstances meant he had not noticed her much. But when she flies to his tree, he is struck down, his usual Pride humbled, and he sets out to woo her.

instantly this shy little creature, slipping along near earth, taking a surreptitious peep at him, made him feel a very small bird, and he certainly never before had felt small.

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