The titles were taken from the adult fiction lists in the Monthly
Bulletins of the New York Free Circulating Library from November, 1895, to
March, 1897, inclusive, and are all such titles as contain a possessive,
whether expressed by the possessive case or by the preposition "of" with
the objective. Some titles are included in which the grammatical relation
is slightly different, but all admit the alternative of the case-ending
"'s" or "of" followed by the objective case.

Of the 101 titles thus selected, 41 use the possessive case and 60 the
objective with the preposition. This proportion is in itself sufficiently
suggestive, but it becomes still more so by comparing it with the
corresponding proportion among a different set of titles. For this purpose
101 fiction titles were selected, just as they appeared in alphabetical
order, from a library catalogue bearing the date 1889; only those being
taken, as before, that contain a possessive. Of these 101, 71 use the
possessive case and 30 the objective with "of." In other words, where
eight years ago nearly three-quarters of such titles used the possessive
case, now only two-fifths use it, a proportionate reduction of nearly
one-half.

The change appears still more striking when we study the titles a little
more closely. Of those in the earlier series there is not one that is not
good, idiomatic English as it stands, whichever form is used; we may even
say that there is not one that would not be made less idiomatic by a
change to the alternative form. Among the recent titles, however, while
the forms using the possessive case are all better as they are, of the 60
titles that use the objective with "of" only 22 would be injured by a
change, and the reason why 8 of these are better as they are is simply
that change would destroy euphony. Among these eight are