How to Write a Dedication: A Few Pointers
A reader of this blog has asked for advice in writing a dedication to a book. As you will see below, dedications vary a great deal in content, length, and style. Nowadays, most dedications are short. About the only advice I would give is not to use “Dedication” as a title on the dedication page, or “I dedicate” in the wording of the dedication. A simple “To” plus a name will suffice, or a “To” plus a name and a short “for line” — an indication of why the person is the dedicatee.
I can’t resist quoting some examples of fun dedications (yes, some of them do use “dedicate” in one form or another and some are quite long).
Tad Williams, author of the Otherland series, obviously had a lot of fun with the task of writing dedications.
Book 1 / City of Golden Shadow:
This Book is dedicated to my father Joseph Hill Evans with love.
Actually Dad doesn’t read fiction, so if someone doesn’t tell him about this, he’ll never know.
Book 2 / River of Blue Fire:
This Book is dedicated to my father Joseph Hill Evans with love.
As I said before, Dad doesn’t read fiction. He still hasn’t noticed that this thing is dedicated to him. This is Volume Two – let’s see how many more until he catches on.
Book 3 / Mountain of Black Glass:
This is still dedicated to you-know-who, even if he doesn’t.
Maybe we can keep this a secret all the way to the final volume.
Book 4 / Sea of Silver Light:
My father still hasn’t actually cracked any of the books – so, no, he still hasn’t noticed. I think I’m just going to have to tell him. Maybe I should break it to him gently.
“Everyone here who hasn’t had a book dedicated to them, take three steps forward. Whoops, Dad, hang on there for a second …”
The great British novelist P.G. Wodehouse penned these elegant (and fairly concise) words for the dedication page of his novel The Heart of a Goof:
To my daughter Leonora without whose never-failing sympathy and encouragement this book would have been finished in half the time.
But Wodehouse was an irrepressible writer who could create humor out of thin air. Here’s what he came up with for his book Bertie Wooster Sees It Through, drafts and all:
Dedication
TO
PETER SCHWED
(Of the firm of Simon and Schuster)
DEAR PETE,
I have rather gone off dedications these last forty years or so. To hell with them about sums up my attitude. Today, when I write a book, it’s just a book, with no trimmings.
It was not always so. Back at the turn of the century I and the rest of the boys would as soon have gone out without our spats as allowed a novel of ours to go out practically naked, as you might say. The dedication was the thing on which we spread ourselves. I once planned a book which was to consist entirely of dedications, but abandoned the idea because I could not think of a dedication for it.
We went in for variety in those days. When you opened a novel, you never knew what you were going to get. It might be the curt take-it-or-leave-it dedication:
TO J. SMITH
the somewhat warmer
To My Friend
PERCY BROWN
or one of those cryptic dedications with a bit of poetry shoved in underneath in italics, like
TO F.B.O.
Stark winds
And sunset over the moors.
Why?
Whither?
Whence?
And the sound of distant drums…
J. FRED MUGGS
Lower-Smattering-on-the-Wissel, 1912.
or possibly, if we were feeling a bit livery, the nasty dedication:
TO THE CRITICS
THESE PEARLS
It was all great fun and kept our pores open and brought the roses to our cheeks, but most authors have given it up. Inevitably a time came when there crept into their minds the question “What is there in this for me?” I know it was so in my case. “What is Wodehouse getting out of this?” I asked myself, and the answer, as far as I could see, was, “Not a ruddy thing.”
When the eighteenth-century writer inserted on Page One something like
To
THE MOST NOBLE AND PUISSANT
LORD KNUBBLE OF KNOPP
From
HIS VERY HUMBLE SERVANT
THE AUTHOR
My Lord.
It is with inexpressible admiration for your lordship’s transcendent gifts that the poor slob who now addresses your lordship presents to your lordship this trifling work, so unworthy of your lordship’s distinguished consideration
he expected to clean up. Lord Knubble was his patron and could be relied on, if given the old oil in liberal doses, to come through with at least a couple of guineas. But where does the modern author get off? He plucks—let us say—P. B. Bitten from the unsung millions and makes him immortal, and what does Biffen do in return? He does nothing. He just stands there. If he is like all the Biffens I know, the author won’t get so much as a lunch out of it.
Nevertheless, partly because I know I shall get a very good lunch out of you but principally because you told Jack Goodman that you thought Bertie Wooster Sees It Through was better than War and Peace I inscribe this book
TO PETER SCHWED
TO MY FRIEND PETER SCHWED
TO P.S.
Half a league
Half a league
Half a league
Onward
With a hey-nonny-nonny
And a hot cha-cha
P. G. WODEHOUSE
Colney Hatch, 1954
DB
Photo credit: Horia Varlan