Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Original Titles of Famous Books

Choosing a title can be very hard.  Here are some working or proposed titles for a few classics:


Old: Elinor and Marianne
New: Sense and Sensibility, Jane Austen ... I definitely prefer the new title.

Old: All’s Well That Ends Well
New: War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy ... It's hard to even imagine this book with any other title.

Old: Catch-18
New: Catch-22, Joseph Heller ... 18 was changed to 22 so as not to be confused with Leon Uris's Mila 18, which was released around the same time.

Old: Incident at West Egg
New: The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald ... Part of me prefers the original title; it makes me curious.

Old: Tomorrow is Another Day
New: Gone With the Wind, Margaret Mitchell ... Glad they changed this one.  The original is sappy and cliched. 

Old: Something That Happened
New: Of Mice and Men, John Steinbeck ... Also glad they changed this one.  The original would not have inspired me to want to read it.

Old: The Last Man in Europe
Now: 1984, George Orwell ... I like both of these.

1 comment:

  1. Catch-18 just doesn't roll of the tongue does it?
    Am I right in thinking that Orwell also wanted to call it 1948 but the publishers made him change it as they thought it would scare people, or is that an urban myth?

    ReplyDelete

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