In Search of a Title

Before deciding on The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald renamed his manuscript a number of times including: 

Trimalchio in West Egg

Among Ash-Heaps and Millionaires

Gold-Hatted Gatsby

Under the Red, White, and Blue

The High-Bouncing Lover

The world almost never had The Great Gatsby. 

The book yes, but the title no.

Kinda makes you wonder what other classic books had different titles before they were published.

A little digging to satisfy my curiosity turned up:

Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird was originally titled Atticus.

Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises was originally titled Fiesta. 

Alex Haley’s Roots: The Saga of an American Family was originally titled Before This Anger. 

Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind was originally going to be Tomorrow Is Another Day, Not In Our Stars, Tote the Weary Load, or Bugles Sang True. 

JRR Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings series was originally titled The War of the Ring.

William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury was originally titled Twilight.

George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four was originally titled The Last Man in Europe.

Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita was originally titled The Kingdom by the Sea.

Philip Roth's Portnoy's Complaint was originally going to be The Jewboy, Wacking Off, or A Jewish Patient Begins His Analysis 

Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead was originally titled Second-Hand Lives. 

W. Somerset Maugham's Of Human Bondage was originally titled Beauty from Ashes.

Edith Wharton's The House of Mirth was originally titled The Year of the Rose.

Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland was originally going to be Alice's Adventures Under Ground, Alice Among the Fairies, Alice's Golden Hour, or Alice 

Don DeLillo's White Noise was originally titled Panasonic.

Jacqueline Susann's The Valley of the Dolls was originally titled They Don’t Build Statues to Businessmen.

Toni Morrison’s Paradise was originally titled War.

Carl Bernstein’s and Bob Woodward’s All The President’s Men was originally titled At This Point in Time.

Ernest Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast was originally going to be The Eye and the Ear, Good Nails are Made of Iron, or Some People and The Places. 

Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited was originally titled The House of Faith.

Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front was originally translated Nothing New in the West (a direct translation of the German).

Carson McCullers's The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter was originally titled The Mute.

William Golding's Lord of the Flies was originally titled Strangers From Within. 

John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men was originally titled Something That Happened.

Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice was originally titled First Impressions.

William Faulkner's Light in August was originally titled Dark House.

George Orwell's Animal Farm was originally going to be Animal Farm: A Fairy Story, A Satire, or A Contemporary Satire. 

Frances Hodgson Burnett's The Secret Garden was originally titled Mistress Mary.

James Joyce's Dubliners was originally titled Ulysses in Dublin.. 

Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged was originally titled The Strike.

Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 was originally titled Catch-18.

Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace was originally going to be All’s Well That Ends Well or The Year of 1805.

Copy and content writers are naturally curious.

Which makes the internet a magical playground.

Have you gone down any interesting internet rabbit holes recently?