Many authors will use quotations from literature as the title for their works. This may be done as a conscious allusion to the themes of the older work or simply because the phrase seems memorable. The following is a partial list of book titles taken from literature. It does not include phrases altered for parody. (Titles taken from works by William Shakespeare do not appear here: see List of titles of works based on Shakespearean phrases.)
Work | Author | Literary Reference |
---|---|---|
Absalom, Absalom! | William Faulkner | 2 Samuel 19:4 |
A che punto è la notte | Carlo Fruttero and Franco Lucentini (literally, "At which point is the night") |
Book of Isaiah 21:11 |
After Many a Summer Dies the Swan | Aldous Huxley | Tithonus, Alfred, Lord Tennyson |
Ah, Wilderness! | Eugene O'Neill | Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, trans. Edward FitzGerald |
Alien Corn (play) | Sidney Howard | Ode to a Nightingale, John Keats |
The Alien Corn (short story) | W. Somerset Maugham | Ode to a Nightingale, John Keats |
All Passion Spent | Vita Sackville-West | Samson Agonistes, John Milton |
All the King's Men | Robert Penn Warren | Humpty Dumpty |
Alone on a Wide, Wide Sea | Michael Morpurgo | The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Samuel Taylor Coleridge |
An Acceptable Time | Madeleine L'Engle | Psalms 66:13 |
Antic Hay | Aldous Huxley | Edward II, Christopher Marlowe |
An Evil Cradling | Brian Keenan | Qur'an 13:18, Arthur John Arberry translation |
Arms and the Man | George Bernard Shaw | The Aeneid, Virgil |
As I Lay Dying | William Faulkner | The Odyssey, Homer |
A Time to Kill | John Grisham | Ecclesiastes 3:3 |
Behold the Man | Michael Moorcock | Gospel of John 19:5 |
Beneath the Bleeding | Val McDermid | East Coker, T. S. Eliot |
Beyond the Mexique Bay | Aldous Huxley | Bermudas, Andrew Marvell |
Blithe Spirit | Noël Coward | To a Skylark, Percy Bysshe Shelley |
Blood's a Rover | James Ellroy | Reveille, A.E. Housman |
Bonjour Tristesse | Françoise Sagan | À Peine Défigurée, Paul Éluard |
Brandy of the Damned | Colin Wilson | Man and Superman, George Bernard Shaw |
Brave New World | Aldous Huxley | The Tempest, William Shakespeare and The Gods of the Copybook Headings, Rudyard Kipling |
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee | Dee Brown | American Names, Stephen Vincent Benét |
Butter In a Lordly Dish | Agatha Christie | Book of Judges 5:25 |
Cabbages and Kings | O. Henry | The Walrus and the Carpenter, Lewis Carroll |
Clouds of Witness | Dorothy L. Sayers | Epistle to the Hebrews 12:1 |
A Confederacy of Dunces | John Kennedy Toole | Thoughts on Various Subjects, Moral and Diverting, Jonathan Swift |
Consider Phlebas | Iain M. Banks | The Waste Land, T. S. Eliot |
Consider the Lilies | Iain Crichton Smith | Gospel of Matthew 6:28 |
Cover Her Face | P. D. James | The Duchess of Malfi, John Webster |
The Cricket on the Hearth | Charles Dickens | Il Penseroso, John Milton |
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time | Mark Haddon | Silver Blaze, Arthur Conan Doyle |
The Daffodil Sky | H. E. Bates | Maud, Alfred, Lord Tennyson |
Dance Dance Dance | Haruki Murakami | Death's Echo, W.H. Auden |
A Darkling Plain | Philip Reeve | Dover Beach, Matthew Arnold |
Death Be Not Proud | John Gunther | Holy Sonnets X, John Donne |
The Doors of Perception | Aldous Huxley | The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, William Blake |
Down to a Sunless Sea | David Graham | Kubla Khan, Samuel Taylor Coleridge |
Dulce et Decorum Est | Wilfred Owen | Odes iii 2.13, Horace |
Dying of the Light | George R. R. Martin | Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night, Dylan Thomas |
East of Eden | John Steinbeck | Genesis 4:16 |
Ego Dominus Tuus | William Butler Yeats | La Vita Nuova Dante |
Endless Night | Agatha Christie | Auguries of Innocence William Blake |
Everything is Illuminated | Jonathan Safran Foer | The Unbearable Lightness of Being Milan Kundera |
Eyeless in Gaza | Aldous Huxley | Samson Agonistes, John Milton |
Fair Stood the Wind for France | H. E. Bates | Ballad of Agincourt, Michael Drayton |
Fame Is the Spur | Howard Spring | Lycidas, John Milton |
A Fanatic Heart | Edna O'Brien | Remorse for Intemperate Speech, William Butler Yeats |
The Far-Distant Oxus | Katharine Hull and Pamela Whitlock | Sohrab and Rustum, Matthew Arnold |
Far From the Madding Crowd | Thomas Hardy | Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, Thomas Gray |
Fear and Trembling | Søren Kierkegaard | Philippians 2:12 |
For a Breath I Tarry | Roger Zelazny | A Shropshire Lad, A. E. Housman |
For Whom the Bell Tolls | Ernest Hemingway | Meditation XVII, John Donne |
A Glass of Blessings | Barbara Pym | The Pulley, George Herbert |
The Glory and the Dream | William Manchester | William Wordsworth, Ode: Intimations of Immortality |
The Golden Apples of the Sun | Ray Bradbury | The Song of the Wandering Angus, W. B. Yeats |
The Golden Bowl | Henry James | Ecclesiastes 12:6 |
Gone with the Wind | Margaret Mitchell | Non sum qualis eram bonae sub regno Cynarae, Ernest Dowson |
The Grapes of Wrath | John Steinbeck | The Battle Hymn of the Republic, Julia Ward Howe |
Great Work of Time | John Crowley | Horatian Ode upon Cromwell's Return from Ireland, Andrew Marvell |
The Green Bay Tree | Louis Bromfield | Psalms 37:35 |
A Handful of Dust | Evelyn Waugh | The Waste Land, T. S. Eliot |
Have His Carcase | Dorothy L. Sayers | The Iliad, Homer (William Cowper's translation) |
The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter | Carson McCullers | The Lonely Hunter, William Sharp |
The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things | JT LeRoy | Jeremiah 17:9 |
His Dark Materials | Philip Pullman | Paradise Lost, John Milton |
The House of Mirth | Edith Wharton | Ecclesiastes 7:4 |
How Sleep the Brave | H. E. Bates | How Sleep the Brave, William Collins |
If I Forget Thee Jerusalem | William Faulkner | Psalms 137:5 |
If Not Now, When? | Primo Levi | Pirkei Avot 1:13 |
In Death Ground | David Weber & Steve White | The Art of War, Sun Tzu |
In Dubious Battle | John Steinbeck | Paradise Lost, John Milton |
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings | Maya Angelou | Sympathy, Paul Laurence Dunbar |
In a Dry Season | Peter Robinson | Gerontion, by T. S. Eliot |
An Instant In The Wind | André Brink | The Broken Tower, Hart Crane |
I Sing the Body Electric | Ray Bradbury | Leaves of Grass, Walt Whitman |
I Will Fear No Evil | Robert A. Heinlein | Psalms 23:4 |
Jacob Have I Loved | Katherine Paterson | Romans 9:13 |
O Jerusalem! | Dominique Lapierre and Larry Collins | Psalms 137:5 |
Jesting Pilate | Aldous Huxley | Of Truth, Francis Bacon |
The Last Temptation | Val McDermid | Murder in the Cathedral, T. S. Eliot |
The Lathe of Heaven | Ursula K. Le Guin | Zhuangzi, Book XXIII, paragraph 7 |
Let Us Now Praise Famous Men | James Agee | Ecclesiastes 44:1 |
Lilies of the Field | William Edmund Barrett | Matthew 6:28 |
This Lime Tree Bower | Conor McPherson | This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison, Samuel Taylor Coleridge |
The Line of Beauty | Alan Hollinghurst | The Analysis of Beauty, William Hogarth |
The Little Foxes | Lillian Hellman | Song of Songs 2:15 |
Little Hands Clapping | Dan Rhodes | The Pied Piper of Hamelin, Robert Browning |
Look Homeward, Angel | Thomas Wolfe | Lycidas, John Milton |
Look to Windward | Iain M. Banks | The Waste Land, T. S. Eliot |
Many Waters | Madeleine L'Engle | Song of Songs 8:7 |
A Many-Splendoured Thing | Han Suyin | The Kingdom of God, Francis Thompson |
The Mermaids Singing | Val McDermid | The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, T. S. Eliot |
The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side | Agatha Christie | The Lady of Shalott, Alfred, Lord Tennyson |
Moab Is My Washpot | Stephen Fry | Psalms 60:8 |
The Monkey's Raincoat | Robert Crais | The Monkey's Raincoat, Matsuo Bashō |
A Monstrous Regiment of Women | Laurie R. King | The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women, John Knox |
The Moon by Night | Madeleine L'Engle | Psalms 121:6 |
Mother Night | Kurt Vonnegut | Faust Part One, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe |
The Moving Finger | Agatha Christie | Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, trans. Edward FitzGerald |
Mr Standfast | John Buchan | Pilgrim's Progress, John Bunyan |
Nectar in a Sieve | Kamala Markandaya | Work Without Hope, Samuel Coleridge |
No Country for Old Men | Cormac McCarthy | Sailing to Byzantium, William Butler Yeats |
No Highway | Nevil Shute | The Wanderer, John Masefield |
Noli Me Tangere | José Rizal | John 20:17 |
No Longer at Ease | Chinua Achebe | The Journey of the Magi, T. S. Eliot |
Now Sleeps the Crimson Petal | H. E. Bates | Now Sleeps the Crimson Petal, Alfred, Lord Tennyson |
Number the Stars | Lois Lowry | Psalms 147:4 |
Of Human Bondage | W. Somerset Maugham | Ethics, Baruch Spinoza |
Of Mice and Men | John Steinbeck | To a Mouse, Robert Burns |
Oh! To be in England | H. E. Bates | Home Thoughts From Abroad, Robert Browning |
The Other Side of Silence | André Brink | Middlemarch, George Eliot |
The Painted Veil | W. Somerset Maugham | Lift Not The Painted Veil Which Those Who Live, sonnet by Percy Bysshe Shelley |
The Parliament of Man | Paul Kennedy | Locksley Hall, Alfred Lord Tennyson |
Paths of Glory | Humphrey Cobb | Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, Thomas Gray |
A Passage to India | E. M. Forster | Leaves of Grass, Walt Whitman |
O Pioneers! | Willa Cather | Pioneers! O Pioneers!, Walt Whitman |
Postern of Fate | Agatha Christie | Gates of Damascus, James Elroy Flecker |
Precious Bane | Mary Webb | Paradise Lost, John Milton |
The Proper Study | Isaac Asimov | An Essay on Man, Alexander Pope |
Quo Vadis | Henryk Sienkiewicz | John 13:36 |
Recalled to Life | Reginald Hill | A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens |
Recalled to Life | Robert Silverberg | A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens |
Ring of Bright Water | Gavin Maxwell | The Marriage of Psyche, Kathleen Raine |
The Road Less Traveled | M. Scott Peck | The Road Not Taken, Robert Frost |
Shall not Perish | William Faulkner | Gettysburg Address, Abraham Lincoln |
The Skull Beneath the Skin | P. D. James | Whispers of Immortality, T. S. Eliot |
The Soldier's Art | Anthony Powell | Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came, Robert Browning |
Some Buried Caesar | Rex Stout | Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, trans. Edward FitzGerald |
Specimen Days | Michael Cunningham | Walt Whitman's prosework |
The Stars' Tennis Balls | Stephen Fry | The Duchess of Malfi, John Webster |
Stranger in a Strange Land | Robert A. Heinlein | Exodus 2:22 |
Such, Such Were the Joys | George Orwell | The Echoing Green, William Blake |
The Sun Also Rises | Ernest Hemingway | Ecclesiastes 1:5 |
Surprised by Joy | C. S. Lewis | Surprised by Joy, William Wordsworth |
A Swiftly Tilting Planet | Madeleine L'Engle | Morning Song of Senlin, Conrad Aiken |
Tender Is the Night | F. Scott Fitzgerald | Ode to a Nightingale, John Keats |
Terrible Swift Sword | Bruce Catton | The Battle Hymn of the Republic, Julia Ward Howe |
That Good Night | NJ Crisp | Do not go gentle into that good night, Dylan Thomas |
Things Fall Apart | Chinua Achebe | The Second Coming, William Butler Yeats |
This Side of Paradise | F. Scott Fitzgerald | Tiare Tahiti, Rupert Brooke |
The Torment of Others | Val McDermid | The Dry Salvages, T. S. Eliot |
Those Barren Leaves | Aldous Huxley | The Tables Turned, William Wordsworth |
Thrones, Dominations | Dorothy L. Sayers | Paradise Lost, John Milton |
Tiger! Tiger! - alternative title of The Stars My Destination | Alfred Bester | The Tyger, William Blake |
Tiger! Tiger! | Rudyard Kipling short story | The Tyger, William Blake |
A Time of Gifts | Patrick Leigh Fermor | Twelfth night, Louis MacNeice |
Time of our Darkness | Stephen Gray | For the Fallen, Laurence Binyon |
Time To Murder And Create | Lawrence Block | The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, T. S. Eliot |
Tirra Lirra by the River | Jessica Anderson | The Lady of Shalott, Alfred, Lord Tennyson |
To a God Unknown | John Steinbeck | Rig Veda Book X |
To Sail Beyond the Sunset | Robert A. Heinlein | Ulysses, Alfred, Lord Tennyson |
To Say Nothing of the Dog | Connie Willis | Three Men in a Boat, Jerome K. Jerome |
Vanity Fair | William Makepeace Thackeray | The Pilgrim's Progress, John Bunyan |
Vile Bodies | Evelyn Waugh | Philippians 3:21 |
The Violent Bear It Away | Flannery O'Connor | Matthew 11:12 (Douay translation) |
Waiting for the Barbarians | J.M. Coetzee | Waiting for the Barbarians, Constantine P. Cavafy |
The Waste Land | T. S. Eliot | From Ritual to Romance, Jessie L. Weston |
The Way of All Flesh | Samuel Butler | Joshua 23:14 (as rephrased in Wesley's Notes) |
The Way Through the Woods | Colin Dexter | The Way Through the Woods, Rudyard Kipling |
The Wealth of Nations | Adam Smith | Isaiah 61:6 |
What's Become of Waring | Anthony Powell | Waring from Dramatic Lyrics, Robert Browning |
When the Green Woods Laugh | H. E. Bates | Songs of Innocence and of Experience, William Blake |
Where Angels Fear to Tread | E. M. Forster | Essay on Criticism, Alexander Pope |
The Wives of Bath | Susan Swan | The Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale, Geoffrey Chaucer |
The World, the Flesh and the Devil | Mary Elizabeth Braddon | Book of Common Prayer |
The Yellow Meads of Asphodel | H. E. Bates | Ode on St. Cecilia's Day, Alexander Pope |
Famous quotes containing the words list of, literature, titles, book and/or list:
“My list of things I never pictured myself saying when I pictured myself as a parent has grown over the years.”
—Polly Berrien Berends (20th century)
“Great literature cannot grow from a neglected or impoverished soil. Only if we actually tend or care will it transpire that every hundred years or so we might get a Middlemarch.”
—P.D. (Phyllis Dorothy)
“Lear. Dost thou call me fool, boy?
Fool. All thy other titles thou hast given away; that thou wast born with.”
—William Shakespeare (15641616)
“Till the sun grows cold,
And the stars are old,
And the leaves of the Judgment Book unfold.”
—Bayard Taylor (18251875)
“Lastly, his tomb
Shall list and founder in the troughs of grass
And none shall speak his name.”
—Karl Shapiro (b. 1913)