In A Path to the Bridge (1958), author Brian Cooper used Cambridge as the background for a haunting tale of love during World War II. Two young men are attracted to the same woman, only later do they find out that she is the half-sister of one of the men.

The novel is also related to James Joyce's Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man (1916) and Virginia Woolf's The Waves (1931). It is also strongly connected to the legend of Ariadne. "Virginia Woolf and James Joyce: Ariadne and the Labyrinth," an essay by Carolyn Heilbrun (Amanda Cross), contained in Hamlet's Mother and Other Women (1990), details the author's feelings about the importance of the Ariadne myth and her speculation about Joyce's overlooking of Ariadne.