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What's one thing that immediately marks out a literary novel as 'literary'? Having a title which declares I'm taken from a famous work of literature, of course. Shakespeare and the Bible are, unsurprisingly, the greatest works of titular inspiration, but here are 50 famous book titles whose authors drew on a wide range of predecessors to name them.

I've split up the books into sections for titles taken from the Bible, Shakespeare, poetry, and other novels. Though I have included women and authors of colour wherever I found them, the limitations of this article has meant that there aren't as many of either as I would have liked.