Lord Peter Wimsey

“As Abelard said to Heloise, ‘Don’t forget to drop a line to me, please.’
As Juliet cried in her Romeo’s ear, ‘Romeo, why not face the fact, my dear?’”

— Cole Porter, Just One of Those Things

Is love “just one of those things?” Now that the Godiva chocolates have been eaten, the frilly greeting cards opened, and the Vermont Teddy Bear-gram forgotten on a dusty shelf, is the spirit of Valentine’s Day dead? Maybe for everyone else, but for the true librarian, whose very profession is embedded in the soul of romanticism, it lives on. Some time ago, for an article in an online magazine, librarians were asked to name what we considered the world’s most romantic love stories. With yearning hearts, raging hormones, and brains overloaded with dopamine, we arrived at ten titles (Wuthering Heights, Anna Karenina, Romeo and Juliet, Casablanca, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Doctor Zhivago, Sense and Sensibility, Les Liaisons Dangereuses, Pride and Prejudice, Hunchback of Notre Dame). Some of these responses were predictable: Romeo and Juliet, Cathy and Heathcliff, Elizabeth Bennett and Mr. Darcy. Others were less so: Did Les Liaisons Dangereuses ever really give someone a warm inner glow? Did no one realize that Casablanca is not strictly-speaking one of the most romantic reads ever?  read more »