Marriage a la Mode
In a letter to the current issue of The Author Miss Pamela Hansford Johnson reopens a topic which periodically engages the distressed attention of the literary world. Can nothing, she asks, be done about the duplication or near-duplication of titles ? Last March she published a novel called An Impossible Marriage; and now two other talented ladies are about to d,e,light their readers with works respectively entitled A Proper Diarriage and The Imperfect Marriage. There is in fact— since there is no copyright in titles--nothing that can be done about this. Anyone who selects a title less esoteric than (say) Dandruff and Galoshes or Too Few Axolotls runs the risk of quite unconsciously plagiarising, or being plagiarised by. somebody else. In a situation of this kind Mr. P. G. Wodehouse once set us all an example of manly fortitude. In the preface to a novel called Summer Lightning he revealed with chagrin that after it had gone to the printers his publishers, both in London and New York, discovered that several other books bearing the same title were already on sale, or were about to appear, on both sides of the Atlantic. I can only hope,' wrote Mr. Wodehouse with stoical humility, 'that my little work may one day be accorded the honour of a place in an omnibut edition of The Hundred Best Books called "Summer Lightning."'
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