List of book titles taken from literature

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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.)

• Absalom, Absalom!, William Faulkner

2 Samuel, 19:4

• A che punto è la notte, Carlo Fruttero and Franco Lucentini (literally, "What of the night")

Book of Isaiah, 22:11

• A Confederacy of Dunces, John Kennedy Toole

Thoughts on Various Subjects, Moral and Diverting, Jonathan Swift

• 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

• All the King's Men, Robert Penn Warren

Humpty Dumpty, Lewis Caroll

• Antic Hay, Aldous Huxley

Edward II, Christopher Marlowe

• 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

• Beyond the Mexique Bay, Aldous Huxley

Bermudas, Andrew Marvell

• Blithe Spirit, Noel Coward

To a Skylark, Percy Bysshe Shelley

• Consider Phlebas, Iain M. Banks

The Waste Land, T.S. Eliot

• The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, Mark Haddon

Silver Blaze, Arthur Conan Doyle

• The Doors of Perception, Aldous Huxley

The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, William Blake

• East of Eden, John Steinbeck

Genesis 4:16

• Eyeless in Gaza, Aldous Huxley

Samson Agonistes, John Milton

• Far From the Madding Crowd, Thomas Hardy

Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, Thomas Gray

• Fear and Trembling, Søren Kierkegaard

Philippians 2:12

• For Whom the Bell Tolls, Ernest Hemingway

Meditation XVII, John Donne

• The Golden Apples of the Sun, Ray Bradbury

The Song of the Wandering Angus, W. B. Yeats

• 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

• If I Forget Thee Jerusalem, William Faulkner

Psalms 137:5

• 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

• O Jerusalem, Dominique Lapierre and Larry Collins

Psalms 137:5

• Jesting Pilate, Aldous Huxley

Essay on Truth, Francis Bacon

• Look to Windward, Iain M. Banks

The Waste Land, T.S. Eliot

• Moab Is My Washpot, Stephen Fry

Psalms 60:8

• The Moving Finger, Agatha Christie

Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, trans. Edward FitzGerald

• Of Mice and Men, John Steinbeck

To a Mouse, Robert Burns

• The Painted Veil, W. Somerset Maugham

Lift Not The Painted Veil Which Those Who Live, sonnet by Percy Bysshe Shelley

• Recalled to Life, Robert Silverberg

A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens

• The Road Less Traveled, M. Scott Peck

The Road Not Taken, Robert Frost

• Shall not Perish, William Faulkner

Gettysburg Address, Abraham Lincoln

• 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

• 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

• Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe

The Second Coming, William Butler Yeats

• Those Barren Leaves, Aldous Huxley

The Tables Turned, William Wordsworth

• Tiger! Tiger! - alternative title of The Stars My Destination Alfred Bester
• Tiger! Tiger!, Rudyard Kipling short story

The Tyger, William Blake

• Time To Murder And Create, Lawrence Block

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, T.S. Eliot

• To Say Nothing of the Dog, Connie Willis

Three Men in a Boat, Jerome K. Jerome

• Vanity Fair, William Thackeray

The Pilgrim's Progress, John Bunyan

• The Way of All Flesh, Samuel Butler

Book of Joshua, 23:14 (some translations)

• The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith

Book of Isaiah 61:6

• Where Angels Fear to Tread, E. M. Forster

Essay on Criticism, Alexander Pope

[edit] See also

• List of titles of works based on Shakespearean phrases