That the reader may have something beyond an unsupported assertion that this is the case, I purpose to offer in evidence the titles of some recent works of fiction, and to make a brief statistical study of them.

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

  “The Indiscretion of the Duchess,”
  “The Flight of a Shadow,”
  “The Secret of Narcisse,” etc.,

where the more idiomatic forms,

  “The Duchess’s Indiscretion,”
  “Narcisse’s Secret,”
  “A Shadow’s Flight,” etc.,

are certainly not euphonic.

Of the others, 8 would not be injured by a change, and no less than 30 would be improved from the standpoint of idiomatic English.  It may be well to quote these thirty titles.  They are: 

  “The Shadow of Hilton Fernbrook,”
  “The Statement of Stella Maberly,”
  “The Shadow of John Wallace,”
  “The Banishment of Jessop Blythe,”
  “The Desire of the Moth,”
  “The Island of Dr. Moreau,”
  “The Damnation of Theron Ware,”
  “The Courtship of Morrice Buckler,”
  “The Daughter of a Stoic,”
  “The Lament of Dives,”
  “The Heart of Princess Osra,”