litlover12

rachkmc did this at her blog, and asked me to do it too. Since it's her birthday, how can I say no? (She just called hers "Rachel's Favorite Romances," but she stuck to literature and literary adaptations. I'm going to follow her lead in that, or I could never narrow it down to ten. But I'm counting plays as literature. Also, I stole one or two of the pictures off her blog. Thanks, Rachel!)

10. Brandon and Marianne, Sense and Sensibility, Jane Austen

(More because of the movie -- and fanfic :-)-- than the book, really. Austen tended to write her romances with a cool detachment that made them less sentimental than they're reputed to be. However, I have to believe that if she'd seen Alan Rickman, her pen might have heated up just a little.)

"But you will not stay away long?"

9. Beauty and the Beast, Beauty, Robin McKinley

(Absolutely the best version of the story that I've ever seen.)

". . . I cannot live without you, Beauty."

8. Percy and Marguerite, The Scarlet Pimpernel, Baroness Orczy

"'Percy! I entreat you!' she whispered, 'can we not bury the past?'"

7. Anne and Gilbert, the Anne of Green Gables series, L. M. Montgomery

(In the books. Don't faint, but I don't like the movies. Sorry, I know everyone else does, but I just don't!)

"I've loved you ever since that day you broke your slate over my head in school."

6. Elizabeth and Darcy, Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen

"You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you."

5. Cyrano and Roxane, Cyrano de Bergerac, Edmond Rostand

"In my most sweet unreasonable dreams,
I have not hoped for this! Now let me die,
Having lived."

4. Eliza Doolittle and Henry Higgins, My Fair Lady, Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe (from Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw)

"Eliza? Where the devil are my slippers?"

3. Sydney Carton and Lucie Manette, A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens

"For you, and for any dear to you, I would do anything."

2. Peter and Harriet, the Lord Peter Wimsey series, Dorothy L. Sayers

"Just exercise your devastating talent for keeping to the point and speaking the truth. . . . That's what I love you for. Didn't you know?"