What No Bridget Jones?

[faustus]

The top twenty love stories as voted for by 2000 readers in research commissioned by UKTV Drama. I've read six... The Guardian had a special offer on a pile of Du Mauriers, but I'm not sure if I'd really get beyond Rebecca and "The Birds".

1 Wuthering Heights Emily Brontë, 1847

2 Pride and Prejudice Jane Austen, 1813

3 Romeo and Juliet William Shakespeare, 1597

4 Jane Eyre Charlotte Brontë, 1847

5 Gone with the Wind Margaret Mitchell, 1936

6 The English Patient Michael Ondaatje, 1992

7 Rebecca Daphne du Maurier, 1938

8 Doctor Zhivago Boris Pasternak, 1957

9 Lady Chatterley's Lover DH Lawrence, 1928

10 Far from The Madding Crowd Thomas Hardy, 1874

11 = My Fair Lady Alan Jay Lerner, 1956

The African Queen CS Forester, 1935 [seen the movie!]

13 The Great Gatsby F Scott Fitzgerald, 1925

14 Sense and Sensibility Jane Austen, 1811

15 = The Way We Were Arthur Laurents, 1972

War and Peace Leo Tolstoy, 1865

17 Frenchman's Creek Daphne du Maurier, 1942

18 Persuasion Jane Austen, 1818

19 Take a Girl Like You Kingsley Amis, 1960

20 Daniel Deronda George Eliot, 1876

http://books.guardian.co.uk/news/articles/0,,2145906,00.html

But: Tears, missed heartbeats and almost-fatal misunderstandings also helped plots to win top ranking, although happy endings - summed up by Jane Eyre's "Reader, I married him" - were considered essential. Forty per cent of women read romantic novels to feel better, 15% for nostalgic reasons and 10% to compensate for their own less highly-coloured love lives.

I'm not convinced all of these have happy endings - and are those percentages exclusive or overlapping (Nostalgia might make you feel better)?

Comments

[lamentables.livejournal.com]

I have read 12 and seen two movies. Don't remember much about most of the books.

[drasecretcampus.livejournal.com]

But which two? Rebecca and African Queen? I don't think I have the patience for The English Uh huh nor Dr Zhivago, Or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bolsheviks. I must see Gone With the Wind one of these days. I'm guessing I've seen versions of Wuthering Heights and maybe Jane Eyre. Luhrman's R&J.

It also strikes me that 1597 is rather definite for dating R&J. Ah, it's the year of the first Quarto - though the text could be as earlly as 1591.

[lamentables.livejournal.com]

I've seen more than 2 as films, but there are 2 of them I have only seen as films. And yes, one of them is African Queen.

Only if projectile vomiting is romantic...

[oursin.livejournal.com]

Take a Girl Like You???!!! WTF?
It's noxious. The male lead spends the entire book trying to get the female lead into bed, and finally succeeds because she's too drunk to prevent him, in fact barely conscious by that stage: something that even his male friends think is pretty poor behaviour. And she stays with him.

I wouldn't describe either Daniel Deronda or The Great Gatsby as a romance in the Mills and Boon-y sense.

I've 'read' 16 of these (poss the only person to have read the book of The African Queen?), except not entirely clear if film or book is meant in several instances, so 17 if you count the movie of Dr Zhivago.

Re: Only if projectile vomiting is romantic...

[drasecretcampus.livejournal.com]

In homage to the deaths of various drummers from the 60s and 70s, perhaps. Or have I've seen too much This is Spinal Tap

There does seem to be a slippage between love story and romantic novel here. I'd lay odds that it is the film of African Queen that got voted for - and presumably the film or musical of My Fair Lady. I did boggle at Take a Girl Like You At least it wasn't Jake's Thing or Difficulties With Girls. I'm surprised Daniel Deronda rather than Middlemarch.

[swisstone.livejournal.com]

happy endings were considered essential

I must have missed the happy ending to Heathcliff and Cathy's affair. Not to mention the flowers and romance at the end of Romeo and Juliet.

[drasecretcampus.livejournal.com]

Somewhere Charlotte Bronte writes that at the end of Villette M. Paul Emanuel may have either returned home safely to Lucy Snowe or drowned at sea, with the indication that the latter is the happy ending.

I'm pretty sure there were 19th century versions of R&J in which they survive (I think they do this in the RSC Nicolas Nickelby). There's also Hamlet II, which begins with Orphelia waking up down river.

[swisstone.livejournal.com]

There's an episode of Man From Atlantis in which Romeo and Juliet survive. No, really.

That reminds me of the Sandman story where Dream is talking to Robert Gadling about a bowdlerized version of King Lear Gadling's seen, with a happy ending. 'Don't worry,' says Dream, 'the great stories always return to their original form'. The irony about this, of course, is that the happy ending to Lear's story is the original form - it was Shakespeare who made the change.