Renaissance Verona · Shakespeare's play, c. 1597
Romeo & Juliet
The universal archetype of forbidden love
The teenage lovers of two feuding families whose deaths became the universal archetype of forbidden love.
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Category
Literary love
The loves literature wrote
Quick answer
From Florentino and Fermina to Elizabeth Bennet and Darcy, literature invented couples more real than many real ones. Here live the fictional loves and the romances of the writers who dreamed them.
Love stories
Chile · 1946–1973
Pablo Neruda & Matilde Urrutia
A hundred sonnets for a secret lover
The secret lover who became wife, nurse and guardian of the Nobel laureate's legacy, and the muse of "100 Love Sonnets" and "The Captain's Verses."
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Colombia · García Márquez, 1985
Florentino Ariza & Fermina Daza
Fifty-one years, nine months and four days
Florentino's wait for Fermina is fixed by the novel itself: fifty-one years, nine months and four days, until he declares his love again at her husband's funeral.
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France · 12th century
Abelard & Heloise
The most famous love letters of the Middle Ages
The philosopher-teacher Abelard and his brilliant student Heloise; their love produced a son and a secret marriage that ended in castration and religious life — and in some of history's most celebrated love letters.
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England · Jane Austen, 1813
Elizabeth Bennet & Mr. Darcy
The love that defeats pride
The couple from "Pride and Prejudice" who learn to love by overcoming his pride and her prejudice: the most perfect happy ending in literature.
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Chile / USA · 1946–1957
Gabriela Mistral & Doris Dana
The love the letters revealed
The Nobel laureate — the first Latin American woman to win it — and her American companion and translator; their love was revealed by the letters published as "Niña errante" (2010), shattering the myth of the lonely "Saint Gabriela."
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England · Emily Brontë, 1847
Heathcliff & Catherine
An obsessive love on the moors
The obsessive, destructive love of "Wuthering Heights": "I am Heathcliff," says Catherine, in one of literature's fiercest declarations.
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Spain · met in 1923
Lorca & Dalí
An impossible love between geniuses
Lorca fell in love with Dalí at Madrid's Residencia de Estudiantes; the painter did not reciprocate physically, but the bond was intense and inspired the "Ode to Salvador Dalí" (1926).
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Medieval legend · 12th century
Tristan & Isolde
The potion that doomed two lovers
The knight who escorts Isolde to marry his uncle, King Mark; on the voyage they mistakenly drink a love potion and fall into an impossible passion that destroys them.
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Florence · 13th–14th c.
Dante & Beatrice
The love that wrote the Divine Comedy
Dante barely spoke with Beatrice, whom he first saw at nine, yet he made her his guide to Paradise and the muse of all Western literature.
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Spain · from 1929
Salvador Dalí & Gala
The muse who signed his paintings
Gala left the poet Paul Éluard for Dalí and became his absolute muse, manager and obsession; he often signed "Gala-Salvador Dalí."
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Greek myth · "The Odyssey"
Penelope & Odysseus
Twenty years weaving the wait
While Odysseus takes twenty years to return from Troy, Penelope holds off 108 suitors by weaving and unweaving a shroud to buy time, faithful until the reunion.
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Arthurian legend · 12th century
Lancelot & Guinevere
The love that toppled Camelot
The greatest knight of the Round Table and Queen Guinevere, King Arthur's wife: an adulterous love that, once discovered, sinks the ideal kingdom of Camelot.
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Brazil · 1869–1904
Machado de Assis & Carolina
Brazil's saddest sonnet
Brazil's greatest writer — mixed-race and grandson of freed slaves — and Carolina, his Portuguese wife: 35 years of marriage whose end inspired "A Carolina," one of the most celebrated love sonnets in the Portuguese language.
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Greece · 7th–6th c. BCE
Sappho of Lesbos
The first voice of love between women
The poet of the island of Lesbos whose verses of love and desire for other women are so famous they gave the words "lesbian" and "sapphic" to language itself.
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Cuba and New York · 1974–1990
Reinaldo Arenas & Lázaro Gómez Carriles
The persecuted writer and his companion in exile
The Cuban novelist imprisoned for his work and his homosexuality, and the young man who became his inseparable companion: they fled the regime in the Mariel exodus and lived the poverty of exile together in Manhattan until the end.
Read the storyFrequently asked questions
How long did Florentino Ariza wait for Fermina Daza?
Fifty-one years, nine months and four days, by the exact count in Gabriel García Márquez's "Love in the Time of Cholera," until he declares his love again at her husband's funeral.