The ultimate in fanwanking has to be inventing a life for a favorite character from birth to death, including all the parts so inconveniently left out by the dumb author.
Sherlock Holmes is the leader in all such things fannish. The first attempt at the full biography is Gavin Brend’s My Dear Holmes: Studies in Sherlock (1951). He doesn’t stray far from the texts, though, and so it was William S. Baring-Gould who went full nutso into imagination in his Sherlock Holmes of Baker Street (1962). Baring-Gould also wrote Nero Wolfe of West 35th Street (1969) and was stopped there merely by death. Michael Hardwick topped him by writing an autobiography, Sherlock Holmes: My Life and Crimes (1984).
Almost equally beloved is P. G. Wodehouse. Geoffrey Jaggard wrote Wooster’s World (1967) and C. Northcote Parkinson (he of Parkingson’s Law) sequeled him with Jeeves: A Gentleman’s Personal Gentleman (1979). Parkinson had previously written The Life and Times of Horatio Hornblower (1971).
In fact, most nuts of this species can’t just do it once. Philip José Farmer put out both Tarzan Alive (1972) and Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life (1973).
Are there more? James Pearson wrote* James Bond: The Authorized Biography of 007* (1973)
The 60s and 70s were the Golden Years of this genre, probably because popular culture was suddenly taken seriously after years of scorn. There must be newer examples. Can the Teeming Millions (itself a leftover phrase from the 1970s) supply them?
I’m looking for purported “real” “nonfiction” biographies, rather than just using the character in more fiction. There are several million examples of that. The listing of Sherlock Holmes and other Doyle characters alone would fill up dozens of post windows.
I assumed Star Trek would generate the most, terentii. Do you have titles for those?
The Life Story of the Flash, originally just an in-universe book by Iris West Allen, Barry Allen’s widow (at that point in continuity) was later published in the real world by DC Comics.
I think this is a bit further from what you had in mind, but DC Comics published a prestige-format book “Lex Luthor: The Unauthorized Biography”, but rather than being an actual biography, the Superman nemesis’s story is told through the investigations of the reporter who was going to put that book together, before Luthor found him and killed him. Great read.
Mentioning Twin Peaks brought to mind The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer by Jennifer Lynch (1989). Can the diary of a fictional person be less real than a biography of a fictional person. “Yes” and “no” are warring inside me. Mostly, this was a cheap attempt at titillation worth scorning for all sorts of reasons.
Thanks. I should have put the actual names in the post.
I was going to mention that one too, but wasn’t sure it fit.
Yeah, both those were great. Amusingly, Farmer also wrote Tarzan and Doc Savage novels which suggested that the biographer didn’t quite have the whole story either.
The Elder Scrolls video games feature two series of books about the Dunmer Queen Barenziah: Biography of Queen Barenziah is the official, “sanitized” version, whereas The Real Barenziah is the unsanctioned, more scandalous biography. Both books can be read in-game.
Phantom, by Susan Kay, was a pretty decent attempt at filling in the history of the Phantom of the Opera.
The retelling of the Opera Ghost wasn’t as good as the original, though, so it’s better to switch to Gaston Leroux’s version once you get to that point in the story.
There are “biographies” of Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot, and there are at least two of Nero Wolfe (one is called “The Brownstone House of Nero Wolfe”, not sure of the other). Sorry not to be more specific, my books are all in boxes in prep for a move.