Following my post about my list of author-title puns on WorldCat, Andy Havers (Manager, Branding and Creative Services at OCLC (who run WorldCat)) contacted me to let me know that the book I said wasn't on WorldCat is on WorldCat: Wieber E. Bijker's Of bicycles, bakalites, and bulbs. I have duly added it.
I'm not sure what this means for my 133t catalogue searching skilz.
A.D. VI NON. IUL. MMVII
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I discovered via Outgoing (via Planet Cataloging) that you can now create lists on WorldCat. This sounded a good place to maintain the list of author-title puns compiled by a recently retired colleague. I have now therefore created my Author and title puns list on WorldCat. There are a couple of small tiny problems with it, in that the punning name is not always the main author so the joke is less obvious (in the case of Insects and gardens the photographs by Carl Goodpasture are not mentioned in the record at all so I had to add a note; but at least you can add a note), and one of the titles was not even on WorldCat (Wieber E. Bijker's Of bicycles, bakalites, and bulbs).
Anyway, do let me know if you come across any more.
A.D. IV KAL. IUL. MMVII
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A colleague who is shortly retiring has for a long time compiled a list of books whose authors match the titles. Unlike these (including Hole in the mattress by Mr Completely and the more archaic Lilburn Stript and Whipt by Colonel Birch), the ones my colleague has collected are real and can be confirmed by visiting the catalogue she was working on when she spotted most of them.
I have obviously simplified the citation. The author in some cases is one of several and, if the second or third, wouldn't normally be cited as the main author; in one case the name given is an editor of an authored work and I haven't mentioned the main author; &c. I don't think this matters.
I am interested in trying to maintain this list and add to it. This is a hard topic to Google, although I did find a post about Author-title puns by Michael Hendry which had the following:
I used to think that Origen, On First Principles was the best-ever match of author to title, but have just run across the gloomy Sonnets de la Mort by the French Baroque poet Jean de Sponde.
Do suggest more if you know them. Please give evidence if you can: e.g. found on a particular catalogue, on Amazon, a bibliography (preferably on the web), etc. Do leave a comment (I don't get many) or email me.
A.D. XVI KAL. NOV. MMVI
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Tom