This melodramatic comedy is set in SoHo, London, on the stage of the Tivoli Palace of Music in April of 1895. A young man is hopelessly in love with a teenage music hall dancer who can't stand him, thinks he is stalking her (which he is), and fears that he is going to shoot her (which he isn't). Because she rejects him, he decides to kill himself. The girl's aunt, an actress and singer, and their friend, an over-the-hill comedian still mourning the death of his wife, try to intervene to "cure" him, and at the same time, teach the thwarted lover what true love really means. This is one of Wilder's many treatments of unrequited love.
Such Things Only Happen in Books premiered on November 25, 1931, at the Yale University theater in New Haven, Connecticut, presented by the Yale Dramatic Association and the Vassar College Philalethis, along with
The Long Christmas Dinner,
Love and How to Cure It and
The Happy Journey to Trenton and Camden.