London:

A truth which has the downside of keeping many true artists poor in garrets and many false ones rich in mansions was universally acknowledged on March 1.

It is that most of us crave overwhelmingly a happy ending to a novel; and that Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice — in which Elizabeth and Mr Darcy ride off to Pemberley in the sunset and live happily ever after — is our runaway favourite of a perfect ending.

This truth was confirmed by a poll of public taste to mark the World Book Day. Nearly 27 per cent cited the ending of Pride and Prejudice. The second favourite, Harper Lee’s modern classic To Kill A Mockingbird, about liberal attitudes to race and handicap, drew 12 per cent. Close behind was Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre — which actually does say towards its close, “Reader, I married him’’.

Conversely, we long for the President of the Immortals to stop mucking about with Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles and allow Angel Clare to rescue her from the scaffold. We want Cathy to marry Heathcliffe in Wuthering Heights. We wish Rhett Butler would give a damn in Gone With the Wind and return to Scarlett O’Hara. And we would so like Winston Smith in George Orwell’s 1984 to do a Lech Walesa or a Nelson Mandela, overthrow Big Brother and settle down with Julia.

These four novels came high among unhappy endings which readers would like to change. So did Boris Pasternak’s Dr Zhivago, Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient and Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina.

Twelve per cent of readers even wanted to reverse an unhappy event in a story as recent as Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Thirty-seven per cent said happy endings gave them a sense of satisfaction. Most said reading a happy ending put them in a good mood for the day. The survey of 1,740 respondents was carried out on the World Book Day website.