A Night to Remember (book)

A Night to Remember (Titanic)

1955 first edition cover
Author	Walter Lord
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre	History
Publisher	R & W Holt
Publication date	November 1955
Media type	Print (Hardback & Paperback)
Pages	260 pg.
ISBN	(hardback edition)
OCLC	1075502

A Night to Remember is a 1955 non-fiction book by Walter Lord about the sinking of the RMS Titanic on 15 April 1912. The book was hugely successful, and is still considered a definitive resource about the Titanic. Lord interviewed many survivors of the disaster as well as drawing on books, memoirs and articles that they had written. He authored a follow-up book, The Night Lives On, in 1986 following renewed interest in the story after the wreck of Titanic was found.

The film A Night to Remember, based on the book and with advice from Lord, was released in 1958.

Lord traveled on the RMS Olympic, Titanic's sister ship, when he was a boy and the experience gave him a lifelong fascination with the lost liner. As he later put it, he spent his time on the Olympic "prowling around" and trying to imagine "such a huge thing" sinking. He started reading about and drawing Titanic at the age of ten and spent many years collecting Titanic memorabilia, causing people to "take note of this oddity." He majored in history at Princeton University and graduated from Yale Law School before joining the New York-based advertising agency J. Walter Thompson. Writing in his spare time, he interviewed 63 survivors of the disaster.

A Night to Remember was only Lord's second book but was a huge success, thanks in no small part to the aggressive advertising campaign carried out by R & W Holt following its launch in November 1955. The book also undoubtedly benefited from the popularity of the 1953 film Titanic and other coverage of the disaster that was published around the same time. Within two months of its publication, the book had sold 60,000 copies and remained listed as a best-seller for six months. The Ladies' Home Journal and Reader's Digest both published condensed versions and it was selected in June 1956 by the Book of the Month Club. The first paperback edition was published by Bantam Books in October 1956.