ENTERTAINMENT

Former journalist Peggy Marsh had been quietly working on her novel for more than a decade when she was discovered by a publisher scouring the South for new authors. Starring a heroine named Pansy O'Hara, Marsh's manuscript was a theatrical, longing ode to the lost, pre-Civil War era in the Deep South. It's working title: Tomorrow Is Another Day.

By the time the novel was published a year later, in 1936, Pansy had become Scarlett; Marsh had reverted to her maiden name, Margaret Mitchell; and her title had been transformed into Gone With The Wind.

This is just one of the literary morsels offered in Who the Hell Is Pansy O'Hara? (Penguin, $13), a compilation of the little-known back stories behind 50 of the world's most famous books.

"When you understand the book's history or something about the author or what influenced his or her work, you can't help but have a finer appreciation for the book, for the art work," says Chris Sheedy, the Australian who wrote Who the Hell ...? with his wife, Jenny Bond.

The book's fiction section spans almost two centuries, from Pride and Prejudice (1813) to Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code (2003).

Readers learn that, once its pages were stacked, Mitchell's manuscript towered almost 5 feet, taller than she, and that she had hidden parts of it under the carpet; that Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita was rejected by every publisher to which it was originally sent; that for Bridget Jones's Diary, which was conceived as a column chronicling the experiences of a thirtysomething single woman in London, Helen Fielding used Pride and Prejudice as a template.

Readers also learn that Ian Fleming, author of Casino Royale, was part of the team that cracked the Nazis' Enigma Code and that 20,000 readers canceled their subscriptions to The Strand mystery magazine after Sir Arthur Conan Doyle killed off Sherlock Holmes in order to concentrate on more serious writing projects.

Ms. Bond and Mr. Sheedy, 37-year-old freelance journalists who have been married for 13 years, came up with the idea during a literary conversation over dinner.

Ms. Bond had once taught high school English and drama, and Mr. Sheedy, a former vice president of Guinness World Records, keenly appreciated the reading public's appetite for trivia.

Ms. Bond still remembers introducing her students to her favorite book, Emma, and how they had been moved by Jane Austen's story behind the story: Austen's family tragedies included a handicapped brother sent away to live with another family, another brother adopted and an aunt wrongly imprisoned for theft.

"Once they came to know Jane Austen's back story, they began to discuss the reasons that Austen put her characters in certain situations," Mr. Bond says. "The students looked deeper into the book as a work of art created by a specific and special person."

Audra D.S. Burch,

McClatchy Newspapers