An aging king divides his realm by his daughters' flattery and is driven mad by their cruelty.
Books that mention King Lear (39)
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte: “…their peril to keep me one minute longer--with several incoherent threats of retaliation that, in their indefinite depth of virulency, smacked of King Lear.”
Kim by Rudyard Kipling: “strict attention to plays called 'Lear' and 'Julius Caesar,' both much in demand by examiners. 'Lear' was not so full of historical allusions as 'Julius Caesar'”
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy: “One was a fantasia, _King Lear;_ the other was a quartette dedicated to the memory of Bach.”
The Rise of Silas Lapham by William Dean Howells: “… and 'King Lear,' and that one that Robeson and Crane have--oh yes!”
Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser: “Fannie Davenport was just opening at the Fifth Avenue. Daly was producing "King Lear."”
The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper: “"EDG.—Before you fight the battle ope this letter." —Lear”
The Pioneers by James Fenimore Cooper: ““Fetch here the stocks, ho! You stubborn ancient knave, you reverend bragget, We'll teach you.” --Lear.”
The Prairie by James Fenimore Cooper: “What! fifty of my followers, at a clap! —Lear.”
The Story of My Life by Helen Keller: “I read "King Lear" soon after "Macbeth," and I shall never forget the feeling of horror when I came to the scene in which Gloster's eyes are put out.”
Evelina by Fanny Burney: “We are just returned from the play, which was King Lear, and has made me very sad.”
The Antiquary by Walter Scott: “Bring me but to the very brim of it, And I'll repair the misery thou dost bear. King Lear.”
Guy Mannering by Walter Scott: “See how yon justice rails upon yon simple thief. Hark in thine ear--change places; and, handy-dandy, which is the justice, which is the thief? King Lear.”
Ulysses by James Joyce: “when we read the poetry of King Lear what is it to us how the poet lived?”
Shallow Soil by Knut Hamsun: “an emperor in defeat, King Lear, thoughts and thoughts.”
The Dark Flower by John Galsworthy: “these together with 'Hamlet' and 'King Lear' were all she had seen.”
Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson: “I started to read more outside of just science and technology—Shakespeare, Plato. I loved King Lear.”
The Noise of Time by Julian Barnes: “Was there a greater portrayal of the shattering of human illusions than King Lear? ... That moment when Lear awakes from madness to the sound of music.”
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley: “"Do you remember that bit in King Lear?" said the Savage.”
Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco: “(epigraph) —Shakespeare, King Lear, III, iv”
Babel Tower by A. S. Byatt: “'King Lear is a great and terrible tragedy. Are you comparing Babbletower to that kind of work?'”
Possession by A. S. Byatt: “named after "a line in Wm Shakespeare's King Lear—'The little dogs and all—Tray, Blanche and Sweetheart, see they bark at me.'"”
My Life by Richard Wagner: “I had drawn largely upon Shakespeare's Hamlet, King Lear, and Macbeth”
A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf: “What was Shakespeare's state of mind, for instance, when he wrote LEAR and ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA?”
How to Read and Why by Harold Bloom: “takes its title from a song fragment sung by Edgar in Shakespeare's King Lear, act 3, as scene 4 closes”
Stoner by John Williams: “"We're all poor Toms, and we're a-cold." "King Lear," Stoner said seriously.”
The Art of Fiction by Ayn Rand: “...the essence of a dominating father (King Lear)...”
The Common Reader: Second Series by Virginia Woolf: “"Listen, it will say, what shall we call this? And it will read us perhaps Lear and then perhaps the Agamemnon..." and again "this must be compared with Lear, with Phedre, with The Prelude."”
Cosmos by Alexander von Humboldt: “Same passage listing Shakespeare's lost-analogy plays: Hamlet, Macbeth, Julius Caesar, King Lear, Romeo and Juliet.”
Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow by Yuval Noah Harari: “According to Dataism, King Lear and the flu virus are just two patterns of data flow that can be analysed using the same basic concepts and tools.”
Italo Calvino by Martin McLaughlin: “A minimalist account of King Lear even conveys some of the force of his famous speech in the storm”
The Anatomy Lesson by Philip Roth: “He taught them...King Lear, The Autobiography of Benvenuio Cellini—taught them all like holy books”
The Castle of Crossed Destinies by Italo Calvino: “the daughter he failed to understand and unjustly drove out while lending credence to the lying treachery of Regan and Goneril.”