Sometimes a book title is a no-brainer. Herzog. Mating. Cujo. But sometimes writers get directly inspired by other works, and that seed of a title worms its way in from a fleeting line the writer had once glanced on a page. Take, for example, John O’Hara becoming dead set on titling his masterwork Appointment in Samarra by that name because of an Arabian tale he read about in Sheepey by W. Somerset Maugham. Within that huge group of books whose titles reference other works, there are a number that borrow a line of poetry for their title. Here are some of our favorites.
1. The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold comes from “I Knew a Woman” by Theodore Roethke
I knew a woman, lovely in her bones,
When small birds sighed, she would sigh back at them;
Ah, when she moved, she moved more ways than one:
The shapes a bright container can contain!
2. A Handful of Dust by Evelyn Waugh comes from The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot
…I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
3. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe comes from “The Second Coming” by William Butler Yeats
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
4. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck comes from “To a Mouse, on Turning Her Up in Her Nest with the Plough” by Robert Burns
But little Mouse, you are not alone,
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best laid schemes of mice and men
Go often askew,
And leave us nothing but grief and pain,
For promised joy!
5. Far from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy comes from “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” by Thomas Gray
- Far from the madding crowd’s ignoble strife
- Their sober wishes never learn’d to stray;
- Along the cool sequester’d vale of life
- They kept the noiseless tenor of their way.
6. Remembrance of Things Past by Marcel Proust comes from “Sonnet 30″ by William Shakespeare
When to the sessions of sweet silent thought
I summon up remembrance of things past,
I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,
And with old woes new wail my dear time’s waste:
7. Endless Night by Agatha Christie comes from “Auguries of Innocence” by William Blake
- Every night and every morn,
- Some to misery are born,
- Every morn and every night,
- Some are born to sweet delight.
- Some are born to sweet delight,
- Some are born to endless night.
8. For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway comes from “Meditation XVII” by John Donne
No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend’s or of thine own were; any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
9. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers comes from “The Lonely Hunter” by William Sharp
O never a green leaf whispers, where the green-gold branches swing:
O never a song I hear now, where one was wont to sing.
Here in the heart of Summer, sweet is life to me still,
But my heart is a lonely hunter that hunts on a lonely hill.
10. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou comes from “Sympathy” by Paul Laurence Dunbar
It is not a carol of joy or glee,
But a prayer that he sends from his heart’s deep core,
But a plea, that upward to Heaven he flings —
I know why the caged bird sings!
11. Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald comes from “Ode to a Nightingale” by John Keats
Already with thee! tender is the night,
And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne,
Cluster’d around by all her starry Fays
But here there is no light,
Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown
Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways.
12. A Passage to India by E.M. Forster comes from Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
Passage to India!
Struggles of many a captain–tales of many a sailor dead!
Over my mood, stealing and spreading they come,
Like clouds and cloudlets in the unreach’d sky.
Tags: Fun Stuff
The Sound and the Fury by William Falkner is taken from Shakespeare’s Hamlet.
“it is a tale. Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.”
Salinger’s “The Catcher in the Rye” comes from a ballad by Robert Burns.
And for the less literary, Stephen King gave us a whole series named from Browning’s Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came
And Browning borrowed it from Shakespeare who borrowed it from the Scots.
No man is an island, entire of itself;
every man is a piece of the continent,
a part of the main; if a clod be washed
away by the sea, Europe is the less,
as well as if a promontory were,
as well as if a manor of thy friend’s
or of thine own were; any man’s death
diminishes me, because I am involved
in mankind, and therefore never send to know
for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
Lolita’s original title was The Kingdom by the Sea, an allusion to Edgar Allan Poe’s “Annabel Lee”. Nabokov alludes to the poem multiple times in the finished book.
One of my favourite murder mystery titles is Rex Stout’s “And be a Villain”, from HAMLET: ‘to smile, and smile, and be a villain’.
The Longest Journey, by E. M. Forster, comes from Shelley’s By the broad highway of the world-and so, with one sad friend, perhaps a jealous foe,
The dreariest and the longest journey go.
The Crimson Petal and the White was a line from a Tennyson poem, title of a bestselling historical novel in the 1990s, can’t remember the author. But I do remember the poet. There’s immortality for you.
Some Tame Gazelle by Barbara Pym took its title from a minor English poet. Some tame gazelle, some [something dove, I think] ah! something to love, something to love.
You do realise that I shall now have to buy everything on this list!.
I called my 1998 biography of Arthur Romney Green (Natula) ‘Life to the Lees’ from Tennyson’s Ulysses
Great list. One addition: Joan Didion’s essay collection Slouching Towards Bethlehem. the title comes from Yeats’s “The Second Coming.” Also, nice one, Amanda. Forgot about that Tennyson poem.
Surely ‘Remembrance of Things Past’ is more accurately described as the Moncrieff translation of ‘À la recherche du temps perdu’ rather than Proust’s somewhat different title.
Wonderful! And some of my favourite poets and authors too. It has brightened a dreary Friday. Thank you
No Huxley? Aside from Brave New World (Shakespeare – Tempest), there’s Eyeless in Gaza (Milton – Samson Agonistes) and After Many a Summer (Tennyson – Tithonus).
And Huxley’s Time Must Have a Stop which are Hotspur’s dying words in Henry IV, part 1. Also an interesting gloss on the theories of Einstein and Hawking.
Can you explain why you think Donne’s Meditation XVII is poetry?
For a contemporary example, there’s 2009 National Book Award Winner Let the Great World Spin:
Not in vain the distance beacons. Forward, forward let us range.
Let the great world spin forever down the ringing grooves of change.
Tennyson, “Locksley Hall.”
Remembrance of Things Past is not Proust’s title. The Shakespearean phrase was appropriated by C. K. Scott Moncrieff for the first English translation. Later translators have used In Search of Lost Time – much closer to Proust’s original A la recherche du temps perdu.
And GONE WITH THE WIND by Margaret Mitchell. It’s from the poem “Non Sum Qualis Eram Bonae sub Regno Cynarae” by Ernest Dowson
This is wonderful. Any way we could get this in a printable list?
Love this! Any chance of reblogging on my website?