MOVED from MAIN - "sequels" to the classics

[Carol]

Goddlefrood wrote:
> 
> As far as the continuation of famous stories goes it is not a 
> recent phenomenon at all. I don't know when it started, but iirc 
> there are only a certain number of basic stories anyway. 
> 
> One well known example of fanfiction is Sherlock Holmes; there 
> has been a plethora of stories about Holmes not written by Doyle 
> Snr. since relatively soon after the author's death. The first 
> several further stories of Holmes were written with the co-
> operation of the estate, in particular Doyle's son, who 
> collaborated with John Dickson Carr on at least one 
> substantial Holmes book.
> 
> Rebecca by Daphne DuMaurier has also had a good number of 
> continuations, one of which is Mrs. Dalloway; as well as 
> rewrites of the story, such as Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm. 
><snip> 

Carol responds:

Just a small correction; "Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm" is a children's
novel published in 1903. It has no connection with the much more
sophisticated (and sinister) "Rebecca" by Daphne DuMaurier, which was
not published until 1938.  

Speaking of published continuations, two different people gave me
"Ahab's Wife" for Christmas the year it came out (2001?), and I still
haven't read it--no idea whether it's any good or not. "Moby Dick," of
course, is long out of copyright and Melville died 1891. Very
different from writing works based on the characters created by a
living author. JKR appears to be pretty tolerant of Internet fanfic,
but I don't know what would happen to an author or publisher who dared
to publish, say, "The Short, Unhappy Life of Severus Snape."

BTW, someone mentioned "The Madwoman in the Attic," which does refer
to the mad wife of Mr. Rochester in "Jane Eyre" but is actually a book
of feminist literary criticism, not a novel. The full title is
"Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century
Literary Imagination," and it was published in 1979. The authors,
Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar, are well-known feminist critics who
examine novels by Jane Austen, Mary Shelley, the Brontë sisters, and
others for repressed sexuality or some such thing. It's been a long
time since I read it.

Carol, who recently found her old copy of "Rebecca of Sunnybrook
Farm," inscribed with "Happy birthday," the date of her eleventh 
birthday, and the name of her then-best friend