# Who is the longest "lived" fictional character **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [March 16, 2004, 4:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-is-the-longest-lived-fictional-character/234587 "2004-03-16T04:38:08Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 7
**Author:** ![zimaane](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/a3d4f5/32.png) [@zimaane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zimaane)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2015, 5:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-is-the-longest-lived-fictional-character/234587/121 "2015-08-04T17:06:47Z")
Minor nitpcik, but Asimov’s Hari Seldon first appears in a short story published in 1942, and last in Forward the Foundation in 1993, which puts him in the top 10. Technically his first appearance is as a speaking holographic image, but that should count, imho. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2015, 6:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-is-the-longest-lived-fictional-character/234587/122 "2015-08-04T18:45:48Z")
Albert Campion, by Margery Allingham 1929-1966 Peter Clancy, by Lee Thayer 1919-1966 Dalziel & Pascoe, by Reginald Hill 1970-2009 Father Dowling, by Ralph McInery 1977-2009 Gervase Fen, Edmund Crispin 1944-1977 ---
**Author:** ![Ambrosio\_Spinola](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9de0a6/32.png) [@Ambrosio\_Spinola](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ambrosio_Spinola)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2015, 8:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-is-the-longest-lived-fictional-character/234587/123 "2015-08-04T20:04:27Z")
> [@MrAtoz](#): > > Tommy and Tuppence should get some kind of special recognition just because, unlike most of these other series characters, they age in pretty close to real time. They’re in their early twenties, just starting out and falling in love, when we first meet them in 1922, and a comfortable old married couple in their seventies by the time of their final appearance in 1973. In a complete inverse of this there’s Rumpole of the Bailey (1978-2009) where Rumpole is always just about 70, but the stories are set in the present day, whenever that is. This means that in the first set of stories it’s said that Rumpole was a veteran of World War II, but in later ones he wasn’t. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2015, 9:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-is-the-longest-lived-fictional-character/234587/124 "2015-08-04T21:46:33Z")
George Gently by Alan Hunter 1955-1999 Ganesh Ghote by H. R. F. Keating 1964-2009 Ebenezer Gryce by Anna Katherine Green 1878-1917 Matt Helm by Donald Hamilton 1960-1993 ---
**Author:** ![commasense](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/commasense/32/3017_2.png) [@commasense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/commasense)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2015, 10:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-is-the-longest-lived-fictional-character/234587/125 "2015-08-04T22:48:41Z")
**Exapno** : Wow. Thanks. But save yourself some trouble and don’t bother with anyone under 45 or so. I found it interesting that in my list, there was quite a clump at 49 years. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [August 5, 2015, 4:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-is-the-longest-lived-fictional-character/234587/126 "2015-08-05T16:06:08Z")
45 is a high bar. I’m tossing in a couple of other 40+ because you’d never hear of them otherwise. Inspector Schmidt, by George Bagby 1935-1983 Colin Thane, by Bill Knox 1957-1999 Ludovic Travers, by Christopher Bush 1926-1968 A couple of comments on earlier names. Trying to pin down what was Leslie Charteris’ role in the Saint books after 1970 is frustrating. Everybody agrees that he wrote nothing after 1970 (or 1971, depending on who you believe). He did something to the tv show novelizations written by others, but whether that was rewriting, touching up, editorial commentary, or merely reading them is impossible to say. If it were my list I’d put him at 40 years. Trying to define posthumous publication is also foggy. I’d have no problem including works in the pipeline at an author’s death. But Agatha Christie wrote \*Curtain \*during WWII and intended it to be posthumous. It happened to come out when she was still alive, but it violates the spirit of the rule, to my mind. The last true Poirot novel is _Elephants Can Remember_ in 1972, giving him a still respectable 52 years. Ray Bradbury wrote about Elliot family not the Eliot. _From the Dust Returned_ is kind of a cheat, really an old short story collection with some connective tissue. Then there’s the mysterious case of Ed Hoch. The master of the mystery short story, he wrote nearly 1000 starting in the 1950s and continuing to his death in 2008. He wrote dozens of series characters and returned to them over and over. I can’t find a complete story listing online, but it’s possible that one or two of his characters span 45 years. ---
**Author:** ![commasense](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/commasense/32/3017_2.png) [@commasense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/commasense)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2026, 10:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-is-the-longest-lived-fictional-character/234587/127 "2026-04-17T22:43:47Z")
I’m using my privilege as the OP to revive this thread after a hiatus of nearly 11 years to report a new discovery that matches, if not exceeds, our current record holder, Lord Emsworth. It’s another Wodehouse character I had not considered, [Stanley Featherstonehaugh Ukridge.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_Featherstonehaugh_Ukridge) I was reading through my collection of the complete works, and just happened to refer to the Wikipedia page linked above, which was created shortly before I posted the OP in 2004. **And answers the question I posed in the OP, with a different answer than we spent the subsequent 11 years tracking down!** If only I had looked there first! (To be fair to myself, I don’t know if the passage below was in the earliest versions of the page.) > Though Ukridge never achieved the popularity of the same author’s Bertie Wooster and Jeeves, Wodehouse retained a certain fondness for him, his last appearance in a Wodehouse story being as late as 1966. With completed new stories appearing over a span of 60 years, he is the longest-running of Wodehouse’s characters, topping Jeeves and Wooster (1915–1974, or 59 years) and the denizens of Blandings Castle (1915–1969, or 54 years). Now this source differs slightly from the data we have gleaned about the other characters, but the long and the short of it is that Wodehouse wrote about Ukridge from 1906 to 1966, a span of 60 years, at the very least matching Emsworth. So there you go. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2026, 11:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-is-the-longest-lived-fictional-character/234587/128 "2026-04-17T23:17:34Z")
John Varley deserves mention. The first appearance of Anna Louise Bach was the short story _Bagatelle_ in 1974 and her last appearance was in the novel _Irontown Blues_ in 2018. That’s forty-four years. ---
**Author:** ![Thing.Fish](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thing.fish/32/9168_2.png) [@Thing.Fish](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thing.Fish)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2026, 11:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-is-the-longest-lived-fictional-character/234587/129 "2026-04-17T23:44:25Z")
Stephen King and Peter Straub will be releasing their third book about Jack Sawyer later this year, 42 years after his first appearance in The Talisman. It will reportedly somehow involve the Dark Tower mythos; a cameo by Roland would take him to 48 years. ---
**Author:** ![Superdude](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/superdude/32/13450_2.png) [@Superdude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Superdude)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2026, 12:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-is-the-longest-lived-fictional-character/234587/130 "2026-04-18T00:05:45Z")
And Father Callahan, who first appeared in _Salem’s Lot_ (1975), shows up again in the _Dark Tower_ series, including the “final” book in that series, _The Dark Tower_ (2004), a span of 29 years. ---
**Author:** ![Banksiaman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/banksiaman/32/3334_2.png) [@Banksiaman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Banksiaman)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2026, 12:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-is-the-longest-lived-fictional-character/234587/131 "2026-04-18T00:36:19Z")
George Smiley, a character created by John le Carre first appeared in his _Call for the Dead_ in 1961, and popped up again in many subsequent novels, including being the main character in the Karla trilogy. His final appearance by le Carre was in _Legacy of Spies_, published 2017, for a total original author print run of 56 years. Just pipped by Wooster. Smiley subsequently starred in Nick Harkaway’s _Karla’s Choice_ in 2024. Harkaway is le Carre’s son, and to some vague extent his official literary successor for that fictional universe, so maybe has a slightly different status to just being a random subsequent author. ---
**Author:** ![Banksiaman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/banksiaman/32/3334_2.png) [@Banksiaman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Banksiaman)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2026, 1:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-is-the-longest-lived-fictional-character/234587/132 "2026-04-18T01:21:28Z")
Since 40 years seems to be a bit of a watershed point where you get an honorable mention, I’ll also offer Ian Rankin’s Edinburgh policeman John Rebus. He first appeared in 1987, in a solid continuing real-time series, so should hit the 40 year mark next year, although is getting older and creakier with each outing. Probably will soon be channelling Ironside when he has to get a scooter onto the mean cobbled streets. ---
**Author:** ![terentii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/terentii/32/212_2.png) [@terentii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/terentii)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2026, 4:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-is-the-longest-lived-fictional-character/234587/133 "2026-04-18T04:06:44Z")
Was Tom Clancy still writing Jack Ryan novels at the time of his death? Seems to me he had already begun farming out story ideas to a number of ghost writers. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2026, 10:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-is-the-longest-lived-fictional-character/234587/134 "2026-04-18T22:06:51Z")
I see above that comic strip characters are a different subject, but I can’t help throwing out that Garry Trudeau has been writing _Doonesbury_ for 56 years and still does a new Sunday strip. Since Wodehouse started writing about Ukridge at 25 and Trudeau started _Doonesbury_ at 22 he might have a chance to hit 60 and beyond. ---
**Author:** ![DWMarch](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dwmarch/32/1010_2.png) [@DWMarch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DWMarch)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2026, 11:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-is-the-longest-lived-fictional-character/234587/135 "2026-04-18T23:05:49Z")
> [@terentii](#): > > Was Tom Clancy still writing Jack Ryan novels at the time of his death? Seems to me he had already begun farming out story ideas to a number of ghost writers. Jack Ryan novels are still coming out _today_. They alternate between Jack Ryan novels and Jack Ryan Jr. novels with new ones coming out about every six months. But to answer your question, I believe there is a point in the novel line where you can tell the “Tom Clancy and So-and-So” was less Clancy, more So-and-So. After he died, they stopped pretending he had written half the book and Tom Clancy was the brand with the actual author’s name in tiny print somewhere down below. The next Jack Ryan novel is called “Rules of Engagement” and comes out on May 19th, while Jack Ryan Jr. will be back in action on Sept 1st, with the fifteenth book in his series, “Pressure Depth”. One of the hilarious things about the post-Clancy Ryanverse is that it intentionally has a hazy continuity. Jack Ryan became POTUS in 1993 at the end of Debt of Honor (although that book may have been set as late as 1999). He’s still POTUS today, with no attempt to explain his eternal Presidency. Similarly, John Clark is still talked about as a Vietnam vet but he’s also still showing up for work (although not getting into action scenes any longer, just administration) which is pretty good for a guy who has to be north of 80 years old now. But the Ryanverse take on this is “don’t worry about it” which is a bit of a shame because I think Clancy would have done other things with these characters rather than just keeping them frozen in time forever as action heroes. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2026, 11:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-is-the-longest-lived-fictional-character/234587/136 "2026-04-18T23:08:53Z")
Correcting myself. I forgot that _Doonesbury_ with all the familiar early characters started as _Bull Tales_ in the _Yale Daily News_ on September 30, 1968. That puts him at 57 1/2 years and with a better chance that newspapers will still exist when year 60 rolls around. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2026, 11:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-is-the-longest-lived-fictional-character/234587/137 "2026-04-18T23:35:00Z")
> [@Thing.Fish](#): > > Stephen King and Peter Straub will be releasing their third book about Jack Sawyer later this year Mostly Stephen King, I assume. ---
**Author:** ![Thing.Fish](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thing.fish/32/9168_2.png) [@Thing.Fish](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thing.Fish)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2026, 1:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-is-the-longest-lived-fictional-character/234587/138 "2026-04-19T01:24:55Z")
That seems like a safe assumption, although Straub’s name will be on the cover. ---
**Author:** ![SCAdian](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/scadian/32/3292_2.png) [@SCAdian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SCAdian)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2026, 12:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-is-the-longest-lived-fictional-character/234587/139 "2026-04-19T12:48:26Z")
Nowhere near the record, of course, but I feel they should be mentioned: Matthew Scudder, by Lawrence Block, 1976-2023 – 47 years Bernie Rhodenbarr, by Lawrence Block, 1977-2022 – 45 years Evan Tanner, by Lawrence Block, 1966-1998 – 32 years Luis Mendoza, by Dell Shannon (Elizabeth Linington), 1960-1987 – 27 years Vic Varallo, by Leslie Egan (Elizabeth Linington), 1962-1986 – 24 years Ivor Maddox, by Elizabeth Linington, 1964-1986 – 22 years ---
**Author:** ![Meatwater](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/meatwater/32/20074_2.png) [@Meatwater](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Meatwater)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2026, 11:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-is-the-longest-lived-fictional-character/234587/140 "2026-04-19T23:26:34Z")
I went to manga to look for info cause many of them have been at it for a long time. The oldest I could find written by the same author was: **[Golgo 13](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golgo_13)**, by **Takao Saito** , 1968-2021 (until his death) which is roughly **53 years**. Despite the original creator’s death the story is still ongoing. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-is-the-longest-lived-fictional-character/234587.md?page=6) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-is-the-longest-lived-fictional-character/234587.md?page=8)