Title
The title of the book is derived from a collection of short stories penned by Vida Winter entitled Thirteen Tales of Change and Desperation; the collection was supposed to contain a total of thirteen stories but was shortened to twelve at publication. Though its title was appropriately amended and its cover eventually reprinted to read simply Tales of Change and Desperation, a small number of books were printed with the original title and the twelve stories. This small press run became a collector's item (one of which Margaret's father holds). Many of Winter's fans considered the omission of the thirteenth story a delightful mystery, and all wanted the answer to it. During the course of the story, Margaret is asked more than once what she knows about the missing tale, and why it was never written. At the novel's conclusion, Margaret receives the long-awaited thirteenth tale as a parting gift from Vida Winter.
Read more about this topic: The Thirteenth Tale
Famous quotes containing the word title:
“It was his title that killed me. I had never spoken to a lord before. Oh, me! what a fool, what a beast I have been!”
—Anthony Trollope (1815–1882)
“A familiar name cannot make a man less strange to me. It may be given to a savage who retains in secret his own wild title earned in the woods. We have a wild savage in us, and a savage name is perchance somewhere recorded as ours.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Eternity is not ours by right; and, alone, unrequited sufferings here, form no title thereto.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)