It’s pretty common these days to have a book series with one or more recurring characters. What is the earliest occurrence of this happening?
My first thought was James Fenimore Cooper and his Leatherstocking Tales featuring Hawkeye/Natty Bumppo. Anything earlier than that?
I think the Greek myths would qualify. Many characters got reused in the legends. Gods & Heroes.
You could say that about any myths from any culture.
But I think the OP is asking about a series of books by a single author.
Don Quixote appeared in a sequel in 1615. Not sure if two books counts as a series, though.
That gets fuzzy though, what makes a book?
Does it need to be a bound book instead of scrolls or tablets?
Does hand copied not count?
Our earliest known authors go back to ancient Sumeria, but not a book in the current format.
Miguel de Cervantes probably counts. I’m pretty sure Don Quixote was originally published as 2 books written years apart. I’m trying to verify that.
I see I got ninja’d
Yes I was talking about a book series written by (or created by) a single author. So I wouldn’t count mythology which I would consider oral tradition that was eventually written down.
Don Quixote works. I didn’t realize it was more than one book.
The Bibles New Testament should qualify because that Jesus character is in each book. Even to those who consider it fiction should at least be able to acknowledge that.
A lot of different authors though. So no more than earlier myths and legends.
I don’t know if plays count, but there are recurring characters in Shakespeare.
Falstaff and several other characters associated with him appear in Henry IV Part 1, Henry IV Part 2, and The Merry Wives of Windsor. In Henry V, Falstaff is mentioned, and some of his associated friends appear.
There are several recurring characters in Shakespeare’s history plays.
Not nearly as old as Cervantes and Don Quixote, but Alexandre Dumas wrote three books featuring d’Artagnan – The Three Musketeers, Twenty Years After, and The Vicomte of Bragelonne: Ten Years Later – over the course of 1844 to 1850.
And you could say the same thing about Star Trek books. Many different authors but the same underlying characters. The OP did not specify authorship, just series of books.
And then there are those who say the entire Bible collection was written by one author, but let’s not go down that rabbit hole of a discussion here please.
I think you missed this:
A book with one sequel is a borderline example at best, IMHO.
The twentieth century has many, many examples of series characters who starred in their own open-ended series of books. Many (but certainly not all) of them are in the mystery/detective genre.I do wonder what the earliest example of this is.
As a related question, I’ve wondered whether the Oz books by L. Frank Baum are the earliest example of a fantasy series, in the sense of a series of self-contained adventures all set in the same fantasy world (like Narnia, Xanth, or Discworld).
The two Alice books predate Oz.
Yes, but arguably, they’re not both set in the same fantasy world. Plus, again IMHO, a book that has a single sequel is not the same thing as a series.
If Alice doesn’t count and we keep a nice narrow definition of Fantasy, we need to determine if any of George MacDonald’s work qualifies as a series of books.
BRB. …
George MacDonald counts: The Princess and the Goblin; The Princess and Curdie and it looks like At the Back of the North wind appear to be a fantasy series.
King Arthur tales? I think several were published?
Howard Pyle published a compilation of them in 1903.
The stories date back to medieval times.
The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu
11th Century
It’s now referred to as a ‘book’ and in the modern world, published as so, but its (handwritten) publication falls outside of modern western concept of book vs books. It’s divided into 3 sections that clearly have a structure of books (a section has several chapters, and a clear beginning , central theme,and end,) a reader may have only only one section of the document, or receive the sections out of order, or all of them at once. Everything is handwritten and each section stands alone but united to the whole document.
The author kept writing --extending the story, with unique sections–until she died. That’s not ‘a book’ that’s a series of united stories (or books) in a world where Murasaki Shikibu was writing the first novel in history.
They’re set in the same real world, from which the protagonist ventures forth. I definitely would count them, if there were more than two.
If the restriction on mythology is that there’s not a single author, would Ovid’s Metamorphoses count? There are 15 books in this epic tale of Greek mythology, from 8 AD; it predates the New Testament by several decades.
The earliest collection / retelling in English is the Morte D’Arthur by Sir Thomas Malory (published 1485).
I thought about mentioning this, but I’m not sure if it qualifies.
Malory originally wrote eight ‘books’, which are each complete in themselves and each have different themes, and there are many recurring characters. Each ‘book’ is about the length of a short modern book.
The publisher, Caxton, divided it up differently - into 21 ‘books’ - and they were all published at once in a few volumes.
Gutenberg has Caxton’s version divided into two volumes: Volume 1 and Volume 2