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I did a search on these and found nothing. My apologies if they;ve been mentioned.
Evidently nobody here reads H. Rider Haggard. They aren’t winners in the longevity derby, but they put i a respectable show.
Allan Quatermain first appeared in King Solomon’s Mines in 1885 and last in Alan and the Ice Gods n 1927, for a run of 42 years.
She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed, AKA Ayesha, first appeared in She: A History of Adventure in 1886 and for the last time in Wisdom’s Daughter in 1923, for a run of 37 years. The two characters appeared together (obviously) in She and Allen in 1921.
Ayesha/She is interesting because she is, as far as I can tell, the first character to be revived in a popular series after being indisputably killed.
Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn appeared in stories from 1876 to 1896, a span of twenty years. But Twain wrote three unfinished pieces about the pair that were published posthumously – Huck and Tom Among the Indians, Schoolhouse Hill, and Tom Sawyer’s Conspiracy. He also wrote one that he tore up about Tom and Huck in old age. These were published circa 90 years after the first appearances, and they’re by the original author, but it’d be against the spirit of this thread to claim such a long “life” for these characters.
Judge Dredd made his debut in 1977 and John Wagner is still writing stories with him. We’re getting close to 50 years.
Similarly, Edgar Rice Burroughs’ characters existed over a long span. Tarzan of the Apes appeared first in 1912, and Burroughs continued to write about him until 1947. He died in 1950, but several of his books were published posthumously. Tarzan and the Madman (1964) hadn’t been published in any form before. The three stories in Tarzan and the Castaways had been published individually earlier. Tarzan: The Lost Adventure appeared in 1995, but it was an unfinished story completed by Joe Lansdale (and in a way Burroughs wasn’t heading, according to some). So Tarzan had a legitimate “life” of 35 years, with spikes at 52 years and 83 years that don’t really count.
His John Carter of Mars first appeared in 1911 and last in 1940, for a run of 29 years, but a collection John Carter of Mars of Burroughs stories appeared in 1964 (although the storieds in it had been published much earlier).
I find it interesting how some of these authors deal or don’t deal with the passage of time.
I was exposed to mysteries and police procedurals by my mother who was a voracious reader of the genres. Through her I attempted to read the 87th Precinct books. As a completest the series was too daunting for me and the time jump felt too weird. In the first book Detective Steve Carella is a Korean War vet. In a later book time shifted and he was now a Desert Storm vet. I don’t know if there was another shift by the end. Something like that happened in W.E.B Griffin’s Badge of Honor series. They started off set in the 70s but in one book they were suddenly post 9-11 with no aging of the characters.
As an aside I’m surprised no one has brought back the 87th Precinct for tv. There have been several adaptations over the years for tv and movies but it seems perfect for streaming. Lots of plots available for adaptations.
Sherlock Holmes and Watson virtually didn’t age until the end of their “careers”.
Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin remained in their mid-fifties and mid-thirties not only throughout Rex Stout’s books, but also in Robert Goldsborough’s first seven continuation (he started screing with it after that)
Burroughs’ John Carter is a special case – when we first meet him he isn’t clear on how old he is or any of his past history. He seems to be eternal. Tarzan started out as an ordinary human being, but he takes pills that confer immortality in Tarzan’s Quest and gets a witch doctor treatment elsewhere, so he seems to remain the same age in Tarzan and the Foreign Legion that he does in his earlier novels.
Allan Quatermain grows old and, it is implied, dies (even though Alan Moore made him an immortal in LXG). As for Ayesha, if shoe could come back from certain death in Ayesha: The Return of She, she could probably come back from her death at the end of that book, too. (the later-published novels about her are set earlier than the first two).
Even though this strays from the OP, I’m going to throw in Peggy Woolley from longrunning BBC radio series The Archers. There have been many writers for the show over the years, but Peggy was portrayed by the same actor, June Spencer, from the show’s inception in 1951 until her retirement from the show in 2022 at age 103 - a period of 71 years.
So literally the longest-lived character in real time. Just mentioning this for fun.
Also a trailblazer in declaring her preferred pronouns.
The rule for this thread is that for works published posthumously, the date of the author’s death is the end date. So for Tom and Huck it would be 1876-1910, 34 years.
So it is a comic series, but there should be an honourable mention to Asterix; originally published in 1959, one of the co-creators died in 1977, but the other, Albert Uderzo, continued with the books until 2009, when he sold the rights, giving a neat 50 years for multiple Gauls.
As well as the human characters who were present all through the series, Dogmatix would have to be a competitor for the longest ‘lived’ dog, at around 46 years.
Uderzo also did two Asterix drawings in 2015, after the Charlie Hebdo terrorist attack, which arguably extends the period to 56 years.
Nitpick: “Dogmatix” is the dog’s name in the English-language books. His name in the original French is “Idéfix.” And the first 24 books in the series were written by René Goscinny.
One more honorable mention for another British crime novelist - Reginald Hill - whose Dalziel and Pascoe series, starring both, began with A clubbable woman (1970) and ended with Midnight Fugue (2009) for a total 39 years. He died in 2012.
This was a chronologically rigorous series with the cast ageing and developing their lives across the novels. By the end one had retired and the other pretty much reached the top. Where the author still has a good decade in him, then what happens? The detectives become parodies of Matlock, solving murders in old folks homes, or they flip and start the Adventures of Young Dalziel and Pascoe, creating a mythic junior high-school detective phase in their lives? That’s why 40 years seems a solid achievement and getting hard to top without either ignoring time’s arrow entirely or taking it into surreal territory.
Every time I start to research a contender, someone posts it or refutes it.
So, instead, I’ll just ask a pertinent question: How do these authors who write a single character for multiple decades keep from getting sick of them?
(Reading all these lists makes the Reichenbach Falls more understandable…)
They all get sick of them. Every single one.
But they don’t get sick of easy money.
My question is how do readers not get sick of the lazy, repetitive, anachronistic writing of authors obviously hating their own characters? Nora Roberts (as J. D. Robb) has written 62 books starring detective Eve Dallas (not counting novellas) in the past 30 years, and two more are already scheduled. And she has written at least 165 other books since 1981. I am not a reader of her books, and I admit to obsessively collecting all of favorite mystery writers’ outputs, but I recognize in them the drop in quality of later works and find many impossible to reread.
And yes, Doyle is the dictionary definition of such sickness and laziness.
A friend introduced me to the Eve Dallas novels a number of years ago and I’d been slowly working my way through them. It’s been a while since I’ve read any, mostly for the reasons you gave. I finally decided, as part of my current library culling, that I was no longer interested in them, so all of them, read and unread, have been bagged for donation.
Tbf, it was Ayesha’s reverential/terrified subjects who came up with the practice of calling their monarch “She Who Must Be Obeyed”, or “She” for short.
Two others who had a good run, but not challenging Wodehouse:
Flashman, mentioned here in 2004 for his then 1969-1999 stretch, extended his run to 36 with Macdonald Fraser’s final publication of the old soldier’s memoir’s in Flashman on the March in 2005.
Richard Sharpe of the 95th Rifles started his career in 1981 with Sharpe’s Eagle, and is still going strong as of Oct 2025 with Sharpe’s Storm, for 44 years. (Although he is not ageing into the future - a big chunk of the work involves Bernard Cornwell going back and filling in the gaps in Sharpe’s documented career which lasts from 1799 to 1821. A good solution to the ageing character problem, except you feel the poor man never had so much as as day off. It does mean Cromwell, granted good health, could beat the record by publishing “Sharpe’s Hectic Afternoon” filling in the last remaining chronological gap in a busy life, in 2041.)
The most recent story is “The Folk of the Forest” from September of 2023 which makes the character 62 years & 3 months old. Michael Moorcock is still alive at 86 years old so it’s plausible there could be another few stories left for Elric.