I imagine that back in the days when it was common (indeed, customary) for novels to be built on the conceit of being collections of found correspondence, or autobiographies, the subtitle was extremely helpful to the casual browser. (In one of the Emily books, there's a bit where Emily reads The History of Henry Esmond despite being forbidden to read novels because her Aunt Ruth is fooled by the word "history" in the title.)
Even these days, novels often have titles that are enormously misleading; A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian, for instance.
See, it's books like that one that cause people like me confusion when there isn't something on the cover to indicate that a book is or is not fiction. I can't remember the number of times I've seen some display of books in a store, and picked one up only to wonder is this fiction? If it doesn't say "novel" somewhere prominent I usually conclude that the book is in fact non-fiction.
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james_davis_nicoll) wrote2008-12-18 12:00 pm
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Even these days, novels often have titles that are enormously misleading; A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian, for instance.
no subject