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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/42050
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Say I have a possible title for a novel I am writing, and it's a word or phrase that has been used in the title of quite a large number of nonfictional works, sometimes as the whole of the title. But I am not interested in those works, because I am only interested in novels. What I am interested in, first, is whether my possible title has ever been used as the whole of any other novel's title; and, second, whether any novel has been published which starts with my possible title and then contains one or more other words following it.

For example, the word might be the term "Literature", in which case the first question would be _Has a novel ever been published called "Literature"?_ and the second would be _Has a novel ever been published under a title containing two or more words of which the first is "Literature"?_ It is no surprise that many nonfictional works have been published with titles that are "Literature" or begin with that word.

Google's [advanced search tool at Google Books](https://books.google.co.uk/advanced_book_search), as far as I can tell, allows only searches for book titles that contain a specified phrase, regardless of whether they also contain other words and regardless too of whether they are fiction or nonfiction.

The British Library's [tool for conducting an advanced search of its catalogue](http://explore.bl.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?mode=Advanced&ct=AdvancedSearch) is more useful insofar as it allows you to search for items that have a given phrase as the whole of their Title field, but like the Google Books engine it does not assist with selecting only novels, or only fictional works, and a further weakness is that it cannot pick out only books and it will also return plays and musical works.

Original score: 2