The Titanic in Print and on Screen

Book excerpt: Titanic scholars contend that the demise of "the unsinkable ship" left more behind than a memory of April 15, 1912, as an important point in history. Through books, films, stories, and songs, the archetypal shipwreck has endured as a metaphor for the perils of mankind's hubris and the fallibility of technology. In 1985, the discovery of the long-missing wreckage two miles below the surface of the Atlantic revitalized interest in the Titanic and spawned a new generation of books, films, and, for the first time, websites, and computer games. James Cameron's blockbuster Titanic became the biggest movie of all time and engendered still greater popular interest in the tragic event. This bibliography is a survey of the immense volume of literary, dramatic, and commercial endeavors that came out of history's most compelling shipwreck. Organized by genre in accessible categories and short entries, the book includes Titanic-inspired documentaries, narrative films, children's books, histories, short stories, novels, plays, articles, essays, software, websites, poems, and songs. Each entry includes a brief review, bibliographic information, and the technical details of the specific source. The reviews include subjective analysis designed to reflect the usefulness of the source and to be of benefit to researchers and scholars. Five appendices include lists of the actors appearing in more than one Titanic film, brief film and television appearances of the Titanic, films never or not yet released, books that survived the wreck, and books written by passengers.