Transfictional Character and Transmedia Storyworlds in the British Nineteenth Century

This book is a study of how transfictional and transmedia storytelling emerges in the nineteenth century and how the period’s receptive practices anticipate the receptive practices of fandom and transmedia storytelling franchises in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The central claim is that the serialized, periodical, and dramatic media environment of the late eighteenth century through the nineteenth century in Great Britain trained audiences to perceive the continuous identity of characters and worlds across disparate texts, illustrations, plays, and songs by creators other than the earliest originating author. The book contributes to fan studies, transmedia studies, and nineteenth-century periodical studies while also interrogating the nature of fictional character.

Erica Haugtvedt is Assistant Professor of English in the Humanities Department at South Dakota Mines in Rapid City, South Dakota, USA. She specializes in nineteenth-century British literature, media and advertising history, and popular culture. She received her PhD in English from Ohio State University in 2015. She works on the serial Victorian novel and its contemporaneous adaptations--particularly focusing on serial character across media. Her articles have appeared in Victorian Studies, Victorian Periodicals Review, Transformative Works and Cultures, and Victorian Popular Fictions Journal.