NEVER BEFORE + perfect inversion

‘never + inversion‘ is B2 with or without past perfect.  The following examples use present perfect simple + inversion:

Never before has man possessed so much power.

listen

Never before have so many people risen so far so fast, on so many different dimensions.

listen

Here’s an example with past perfect inversion without ‘before’:

Never had I felt such an incomprehensible emptiness within myself.

listen

In the English Grammar Profile, B2 point 68 in  PAST is defined as:

past perfect simple,  invert the subject and auxiliary verb after ‘never (before)’ to talk about a unique event, often in formal contexts.

• Strangely, the shorter structure = inverted past perfect is listed at C1.
• This point also overlaps the categories of Negatives and Adverbs.

There are not many examples to find of ‘never before + inverted past perfect’.  We found these top 10 examples by searching in the iWeb corpus for:

never before had _P _VVN

1 NEVER BEFORE HAD I SEEN 57

  The New York Review of Books

“I was floored,” she writes; “never before had I seen any human skin books that were so obviously of human origin.”

2 NEVER BEFORE HAD I FELT 19
3 NEVER BEFORE HAD WE SEEN 18
4 NEVER BEFORE HAD I EXPERIENCED 17

He was wonderful and pleasant.
Never had I experienced a person in this field who truly enjoyed his job and it showed.

americasbest.com

5 NEVER BEFORE HAD HE FELT 16
6 NEVER BEFORE HAD I HEARD 15
7 NEVER BEFORE HAD HE SEEN 14
8 NEVER BEFORE HAD THEY SEEN 9
9 NEVER BEFORE HAD I ENCOUNTERED 7
10 NEVER BEFORE HAD I THOUGHT 5

It seems even rarer with ‘before’ removed from our search:

We included full stops to make sure it is at the start of a sentence:

. never had _P _VVN

1 . NEVER HAD I FELT 24
2 . NEVER HAD I SEEN 23
3 . NEVER HAD HE SEEN 16
4 . NEVER HAD I IMAGINED 10
5 . NEVER HAD I HEARD 8