The name of classics

If someone were to ask you whether or not you’d read Trimalchio in West Egg, your first instinct might be to say ‘no’, and your second might be to marvel at the curious range of titles given to cookery books nowadays. Sorry to say, you’re possibly wrong on both counts – you might well have readTrimalchio in West Egg without realizing it, since that was an early title for F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby.

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如果有人問你是否讀過《西卵的特里馬喬》，你的第一反應可能是說不，然後你大概會覺得驚奇的以爲這是現代烹飪書的奇怪標題。很抱歉，你可能錯了。你很可能讀過《西卵的特里馬喬》卻還不知道，因爲它是F·斯科特·菲茲傑拉德《了不起的蓋茨比》一書起初的名字。

authors often change the titles of their novels before publication – either as their thoughts develop, or at the request of the publisher. Here is a list of classic novels and their working titles.

作家們常常在出版前改動小說的書名，有時是因爲他們有了新的靈感，有時是出版商要求如此。下表列出了一些經典小說和它們出版前的書名。