On a theoretical level, I focused on the concept of appropriation as the factor that unites amateur media fan fiction and the professional literary sequels, and distinguishes both from other works that also continue or retell existing texts (although I feel that all such sources are part of a larger context). Appropriation assumes ownership and this limited my pool of titles in two ways.
First, I eliminated any work that did not have an attributed author: Grendel, John Gardner’s classic rewriting of Beowulf, any retellings of fairy or folk tales, Robin Hood or the Arthurian saga were all out.
Second, I eliminated franchises, media tie-ins, and other books that appear to have been initiated by a corporate entity rather than by an individual author. This was more difficult to determine but in general I eliminated any recent work that involved an unfinished manuscript (Robert Parker’s completion of Raymond Chandler, Jill Paton Walsh’s Lord Peter books), and books that seem to have been solicited by the estate or publisher such as the authorized sequels to Gone with the Wind, Rebecca, and The Godfather (although I read them, God help me). I retained The Watsons, Jane Austen’s unfinished manuscript, and a number of Holmes pastiches that thank the estate for permission but don’t appear to have been solicited.
As I continue to read, I’m reassessing the idea of “professionally published.” Some of the publishers here are clearly fan presses—Breese publishes Holmes and Holmes accessories, and that’s all. It seems to me that the changes in publishing are an indication that the line between fan fic and pro fan fic is illusory—with the net, self-publication, print on demand, and so forth, the distinction between professional and amateur is further eroded. My current criterion for whether to include a title or not is whether it’s in WorldCat and how many libraries own a copy. Titles owned by only 1 or 2 libraries are more likely to be fan-published than professionally-published, although clearly there are exceptions. I’m not sure if this line will hold, though.
My master list is 600+ titles and I’m still reading and adding and deleting titles. The charts on this website reflect the 287 titles I’d read by April 2007 that do fit. [And not the 100+ other books I slogged through.]
The above chart shows the break down of continuing titles by original author. You can see that the authors who have inspired the greatest number of sequels or retellings are Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Jane Austen, Bram Stoker, William Shakespeare, Robert Louis Stevenson, Charles Dickens, and Thomas Hughes (the continuing titles are all part of the Flashman series by George McDonald Fraser, based on Hughes’s Tom Brown’s School Days). The “Other 1-5” slice represents 37 original authors whose works have inspired between 1 and 5 retellings/continuations each; “Other 6-10” represents 4 original authors whose works have inspired 6-10.
Part 1: Introduction
Part 2: List Parameters
Part 3: Doyle & Austen
Part 4: Fan Fiction Categories
Part 5: Annotations
