Love and Romance

First of all, I want to state clearly that I DO NOT read trashy romance novels! Perhaps that's why it has taken me so long to put a Love and Romance Index on this site. I really didn't plan to at all, but the amount of material that belongs here became overwhelming. The truth is, the majority of books use love and romance as a main theme, or important secondary theme. Once I succumbed to that realization, then the addition of this index became inevitable.

Of course, the next hurdle I had to clear was how to classify all these literary lovers. Oh, dear. What a mess. There's romantic comedy, of the Jane Austin variety, romantic tragedy, like Romeo and Juliet, unrequited love, as in The Sorrows of Young Werther, dysfunctional love, as in most of Dostoyevsky's novels, love that overcomes immense obstacles, as in The Mysteries of Udolpho, which is also a Gothic Romance, in addition to having more than one romantic attachment going on at once, of very different sorts. In fact, many novels have more than one romantic involvement, which may be of totally different classifications.

What I have decided to do is include only books where love is truly an important theme, and to not include collections of stories, because most collections have at least one story where love or romance is a theme, and often several stories of totally different types of romantic relationships. Many novels fall into several different classifications of romance, so, the best I could, I chose the one that was the most dominant. Below the listings is a guide to my criteria in classifying each novel. Bear with me, this list will no doubt undergo metamorphosis. Fortunately, updating these pages is a breeze. So, here it all is. Throw away the Harlequins and read some of these juicy gems!

Hendrick Goltzius: The Fall of Man

The Main Categories

Happy Ending, Requited, True Love

After London, Or, Wild England
Armadale
Armageddon 2419 A.D. and The Airlords of Han
Around the World in Eighty Days
Brewster's Millions
David Balfour, or, Catriona
Elleander Morning
Emma
A Final Reckoning: A Tale of Bush Life in Australia
The Glimpses of the Moon
The Haunted Monastery and The Chinese Maze Murders
The Heart of Princess Osra
Hide and Seek
How Stella Got Her Groove Back
Joseph Andrews
Kai Lung's Golden Hours
The Ladies of Missalonghi
The Last Egyptian: A Romance of the Nile
Looking Backward
Manalive
The Man in Lower Ten
Mayhem in B-Flat
A May Night, or the Drowned Maiden
Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure
Micah Clarke
The Mystery of the Sea
Nicholas Nickleby
Northanger Abbey
The Perfume of the Lady in Black
Persuasion
The One Way Out
Pickwick Papers
O Pioneers!
Pride and Prejudice
A Rogue's Life
The Sea-Wolf
Sense and Sensibility
Sir Nigel
The Story of Jack Ballister's Fortunes
A Tale of Two Cities
Tamawaca Folks: A Summer Comedy
The Vicar of Wakefield
The Warden
The Watsons By Jane Austen and L. Oulton
The Watsons (Completed by John Coates)
The White Company

AAAAA

Correggio: The Education of Cupid

Anonymous: A Bridal Pair

Pierre-August Cot: The Storm

Norman M. Price: Romeo and Juliet

Tragic, Death, Unrequited

The Age of Innocence
Fanshawe
Forrest Gump
The House Behind the Cedars
The House of Mirth
The Jewel of Seven Stars
Last of the Dragons (Graphic Novel)
The Last Man
Lord Jim
Lucy Gayheart
The Marble Faun
The Picture of Dorian Gray
The Romance of Tristan and Iseult
Rupert of Hentzau: From the Memoirs of Fritz Von Tarlenheim
The Scarlet Letter
The Sea Lady: A Tissue of Moonshine
The Secret Agent
The Sorrows of Young Werther
Summer
Under Western Eyes
Villette
Washington Square
The Watter's Mou'
Where Angels Fear to Tread
The Wyvern Mystery

DDDDDD

Passionate, Deep, Obstacles

At Fault
The Black Arrow: A Tale of the Two Roses
The Castle of Otranto
City of Endless Night
The Day of the Dolphin
Deception Point
Erewhon
Evelina's Garden
The Eyes of Darkness
Frenchman's Creek
The Garden Behind the Moon: A Real Story of the Moon-Angel
The Golden Bowl
Herland
The Iron Heel
Jane Eyre
The Lady of the Shroud
Les Misérables
Madame de Treymes
The Man
Mansfield Park
Maya: A Story of Yucatan
The Moonstone
The Mysteries of Udolpho
The Mystery of the Yellow Room
The Night Land
Origin
The Pellucidar Series
The Prisoner of Zenda
The Quest of the Silver Fleece
Raptor Red
Rebecca
Riders of the Purple Sage
Tales of the Samurai
Trent's Last Case
The Twentieth Day of January
The Woman in White

MMMMM

Franҫois Boucher: Hercules and Omphale

Francesco Hayez: The Kiss

Jan Steen: The Seduction





Flirtatious, Phony

An Alabaster Box
The Aspern Papers
The Blacker the Berry
The Blithedale Romance
Daisy Miller
First Love and The Diary of a Superfluous Man
Jurgen
Père Goriot
Roxana: The Fortunate Mistress
A Sentimental Journey
This Side of Paradise
The Vagabond
What Maisie Knew

AAAAA

Unfaithful

Alexander's Bridge
The Ambassadors
Arthurian Romances
The Awakening
Fear of Flying
The Good Soldier
The Haunted Hotel: A Mystery of Modern Venice
Lady Susan
A Lost Lady
The Money Changers

GHILK

Philip Hermogenes Calderon: Broken Vows

Louis Cranach the Elder: Samson and Delilah

Norman M. Price: Beatrice and Benedick

Scorned, Relationship Made in Hell

Almayer's Folly
The American
Armadale
The Boys of Sheriff Street (Graphic Novel)
The Buccaneers
Dark Shadows: The Salem Branch
The Forsyte Saga
In the Drift
The Magnificent Ambersons
The Master of Ballantrae
The Moon and Sixpence
My Cousin Rachel
The Mystery of Edwin Drood
The Old Maid
One of Ours
An Outcast of the Islands
The Phantom of the Opera
The Portrait of a Lady
Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
Three Lives
Wide Sargasso Sea

HHHHHH

Carl Spitzweg: The Love Letter

George Cochran Lambdin: The Courtship

Dysfunctional

The Beckoning Fair One
The Blue Lagoon
Castle Rackrent
Death in Venice
The Double
The Eternal Husband
Fantômas
The Gambler
Great Expectations
The House on the Strand
The Idiot
The Immoralist
The Insulted and Injured (or The Humiliated and Wronged)
Jamaica Inn
A Killing in Comics
The King's General
The Landlady
The Magician's Wife (Graphic Novel)
Make Room! Make Room!
Miss Betty
Moll Flanders
My Mortal Enemy
Nostromo
Notes From the Underground
Obelists Fly High
Odd John and Sirius: Two Science-Fiction Novels by Olaf Stapledon
The Once and Future King
Phantastes: A Faerie Romance
Poor Folk
The Possessed
The Rescue
Resurrection
The Secret Life of Algernon Pendleton
The Testament
Victory: An Island Tale
When I Grow Rich
The Wings of the Dove
Wuthering Heights

JJJJJJ

Gustav Klimt: The Kiss

The Criteria

Here is a little idea of how I based my decisions in classifying these novels into "love-types." It may change tomorrow. In Happy Ending, Requited, True Love, the main lovers are united. The book itself may not be happy, such as in A Tale of Two Cities, most definitely a tragedy, but the lovers end up together and happy. Others of these are romantic comedies, such as Northanger Abbey. The opposite is true in Tragic, Death, Unrequited. Forrest Gump is definitely a comedy, but the relationship is sad. Most of these, however, are tragic stories, with one or both of the lovers dying. In Passionate, Deep, Obstacles, the relationship or lives undergo a challenge. The Mysteries of Udolpho a classic Gothic romance, is a prime example of how the lovers are separated for a while, but love endures. The Iron Heel is about a revolution, but love is solid even though life is not. The Flirtatious and Phony romances are those we know aren't real, and can be innocent, as in A Sentimental Journey, or deadly, as in Daisy Miller. The ones in Infidenity involve some kind of cheating, either physical or emotional. Scorned is for those romances not made in heaven, ranging from lack of love to loathing. The Dysfunctional category contains, as mentioned above, Dostoyevsky's novels, because his characters had the most bizarre relationships, and there are some others here that are pretty well screwed up. Keep in mind, there are other categories that I didn't include, such as Gothic and the many novels with several relationships happening at once. Below, I have classified Plays and Poetry only two ways: Comedy or Tragedy

Pablo Picasso: The Lovers

Plays and Poetry

Plays: Comedy

An Ideal Husband
The Beggar's Opera
Heartbreak House
The Imaginary Invalid
The Importance of Being Earnest
Lady Windermere's Fan
Lysistrata
The Misanthrope
The Rivals
The School for Scandal
She Stoops to Conquer
Tartuffe
The Way of the World
A Woman of No Importance

Plays: Tragedy

Beyond the Horizon
Cyrano de Bergerac
The Duchess of Padua
Exiles
The Father
The Lower Depths
Maya: A Drama
Miss Julie
The Playboy of the Western World and Riders to the Sea
The Recognition of Śakuntala

Plays: Collections

An Anthology of Greek Drama, First Series
An Anthology of Greek Drama, Second Series

Poetry: Tragedy

The Aeneid
The Songs of Bilitis
Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie

NNNNN

Romance in Art and Coloring

Thomas Hart Benton: Romance

Coloring Books

Heart Designs
Hearts and Roses Stained Glass
A Midsummer Night's Dream Stained Glass
Sleeping Beauty
Wedding Traditions from Around the World

Books with CD-ROM

120 Great Paintings of Love & Romance

RWRW

FineArt

Shakespeare Illustrated: Art By Arthur Rackham, Edmund Dulac, Charles Robinson And Others

Giulio Romano: Two Lovers

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