Transfictional Character and Transmedia Storyworlds in the British Nineteenth Century

225 Pages·2022·3.929 MB·English

by  Erica Haugtvedt

PALGRAVE FAN STUDIES
Transfictional Character and
Transmedia Storyworlds in the
British Nineteenth Century
Erica Haugtvedt
Palgrave Fan Studies
Series Editors
Louise Geddes
Adelphi University
Garden City, NY, USA
Lincoln Geraghty
University of Portsmouth
Portsmouth, UK
This book series represents the interdisciplinary field of fan studies. It con-
siders the different ways in which fan studies exists at the intersection of
media (old and new), cultural studies, and reception studies and as a result,
rethinks the production of the fields of literature, art, philosophy, theater
and performance, film and television, and beyond. The series welcomes a
diverse set of methodological approaches including Marxism, race theory,
gender studies, affect theory, the history of print, convergence theory,
digital studies, material culture, and participatory culture, as well as geog-
raphies, historical periods, and disciplines. The aim of the series is to show-
case how fan studies can offer new theoretical frameworks for understanding
significant artistic, literary, historical, and cultural movements, and in turn,
how these innovative approaches to representing contemporary culture
and media theory have expanded the Humanities.
Erica Haugtvedt
Transfictional
Character and
Transmedia
Storyworlds in the
British Nineteenth
Century
Erica Haugtvedt
South Dakota Mines
Rapid City, SD, USA
ISSN 2662-2807 ISSN 2662-2815 (electronic)
Palgrave Fan Studies
ISBN 978-3-031-13462-3 ISBN 978-3-031-13463-0 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-13463-0
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A
cknowledgments
A scholarly life depends upon the seriality of the past into the present. We
are each enmeshed in webs of connection, series upon series of causality
that proliferate throughout history. As I think back on the process of com-
pleting this book, I remember how I am indebted to people both near and
far, people whose thoughts I have encountered only through writing and
people who have supported me in my everyday life. I cannot fully articu-
late my gratitude. All I can hope is that my work contributes to the work
of others in the future and that we will keep building these webs of con-
nection together.
I want to thank many wonderful friends, teachers, and mentors.
Frederick Aldama mentored me as an undergraduate English major who
aspired to become an academic; he first introduced me to cognitive nar-
ratology and has always been the model of academic kindness and charity.
Jim Phelan, Brian McHale, and David Herman further taught me the
fundamentals of narrative theory and are sage sources of wisdom.
Throughout my graduate career, my horizons expanded through encoun-
ters with powerful minds and new fields of study. Sandra MacPherson
taught me the long history of the English novel. David Brewer’s work on
the afterlife of character in the eighteenth century has been an inspiration
for my own; his mode of thought has challenged me to reframe my own
thinking in new and unexpected ways. I am grateful to both Sandra and
David for serving on my doctoral candidacy exam.
This project would not have been possible without the support of my
dissertation committee. Robyn Warhol consistently pushed me to bring
my scholarship to the next level, all the while assuring me that I am
v
vi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
capable. I thank Amanpal Garcha for his counsel and advice. As ever,
Aman is one of the best allies a young scholar can have. I am grateful for
Jill Galvan’s sensitive readings of Chaps. 2 and 4 and her astute and useful
feedback. Finally, I am enormously thankful for my PhD advisor, Sean
O’Sullivan, who patiently and kindly guided me through the dissertation
and helped me develop ideas and arguments from the beginning. I am
inspired by his work on serial form and can only hope to emulate his per-
ceptiveness and benevolence as a scholar. I have been blessed to keep com-
pany with such wise and compassionate people.
I thank my family, friends, and intellectual communities for their sup-
port throughout this long process. Kate Novotny Owen, Ben Novotny
Owen, Cecily Hill, Michael Harwick, Emily Cody, Julia Istomina, and
J. Brendan Shaw have been steadfast friends throughout. Michael Harwick
read several versions of Chap. 3 and helped shape it into what I intended
it to be, and Adam Abraham, whom I met at Dickens Universe in 2012,
kindly provided feedback on Chap. 2. My colleagues at South Dakota
Mines—particularly Christy Tidwell, Kayla Pritchard, Laura Kremmel,
and John Dreyer—have modeled how to keep writing while also teaching
and serving the university. I am grateful for the research support of my
department head, Allison Gilmore, and Provost Lance Roberts. I have
continually been inspired by annual meetings with the International
Society for the Study of Narrative, the Research Society for Victorian
Periodicals, and the Victorian Popular Fiction Association. These associa-
tions are filled with members who are gracious and generous with their
knowledge.
Closer to home, my parents, Curtis and Candace Haugtvedt, and sis-
ter, Andrea Haugtvedt, have instilled in me the joys of learning. My dad’s
career as a professor of social psychology has doubtlessly influenced my
interest in how we conceptualize and think about people from an early
age. My parents-in-law, Jonathan and Susan Thomas, have lovingly wel-
comed me into their family. Finally, I am thankful for the family and home
that I have made with my partner. Our beloved dog, Lucille Ball, sat at my
feet throughout the writing of the dissertation and most of this book and
provided the kind of support that only a companion animal can. We mourn
her. I am deeply indebted to the caregivers of Westside Preschool and
Daycare of Rapid City, South Dakota, without whom this work would not
be possible. Finally, my most profound gratitude and devotion go to my
husband, Evan Benjamin Thomas, who has always been there. He
has talked tirelessly with me through big ideas while weathering all the
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS vii
many challenges of the last several years with ingenuity and resilience. His
brilliance, inventiveness, and steadfast support can never be adequately
appreciated. It is to him and our sons, Clark Benjamin Haugtvedt Thomas
and Lars Richard Haugtvedt Thomas, that I dedicate this work.
This publication received the support of a 2020 Curran Fellowship
awarded by the Research Society for Victorian Periodicals and funded
from the bequest of the Eileen Curran estate. As a tenure-track faculty
member caught in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, I used the
Curran funds to purchase, with the help of South Dakota Mines and the
Department of Humanities & Social Sciences, a subscription to the
Proquest British Periodicals II database. This allowed me to access archival
material remotely that I was unable to travel to see.
While I was a graduate student at Ohio State University, I was the for-
tunate recipient of several grants that allowed me to conduct archival
research for this project domestically and abroad at the Houghton, the
British Library, and the Bodleian. I received an Alumni Grant for Graduate
Research and Scholarship from the Graduate School as well as a grant
from the G. Michael Riley International Travel Fund from the College of
Arts and Sciences, and a Blickle Travel Award from the English Department
to fund a three-week-long research trip to the UK. I thank the Women’s
Development Grant for sponsoring travel to Harvard’s Houghton Library.
A spring 2015 dissertation fellowship from the English Department
enabled me to focus on this project exclusively for a semester.
Portions of this book have appeared in other publications. Parts of
Chap. 1 appeared in “Victorian Penny Press Plagiarisms as Transmedia
Storytelling” in Transformative Works and Cultures, vol. 36 (2021). Parts
of Chap. 3 appeared in “Class and Complex Transmedia Character in Jack
Sheppard (1839–1840)” in Victorian Popular Fictions Journal 3.2 (2022).
c
ontents
1 Introduction: From Novel Studies to Fan Studies 1
A Theory of Transfictional Character: Realism, Immersion, and
Schemata 6
Victorian Fandom? 16
British Nineteenth-Century Transfictionality 21
Chapter Organization 28
Works Cited 30
2 Pickwick Abroad (1837–1838): Transfictional Character as
Permanent Object 35
An Old-Fashioned Tale 38
Pickwick Abroad 43
A Rivalry 48
Master Humphrey’s Clock 51
Reviving Pickwick 55
Transfictional Character as Permanent Object 58
Parallel Simulations: Performing Writing and Reading 68
Works Cited 71
3 Jack Sheppard (1839–1840): Class and Complex
Transfictional Character 77
The Jack Sheppard Mania 78
Rhetoric of Class and Literacy 83
Victorian Intellectual Property Law and Transmediality 86
ix
x CONTENTS
Jack Sheppards 88
History and Fiction 97
Complex Transfictional Character 100
Class Conflict 106
Works Cited 109
4 Trilby (1894) in the Marketplace: fin de siècle
Merchandising and Transfictional Character as Branded
Object 115
Trilby in the Marketplace 118
Advertising and Serial Narration 119
Publication History: Illustration, Advertisement, Literature 123
The Novel: Trilby as Object 131
Reception: Trilby in the Marketplace 148
Works Cited 159
5 Sherlock Holmes (1887–1930): Believing in Character 163
Sherlock Holmes in Nineteenth-Century Periodicals 166
Naive Believers 174
Ironic Believers: The Baker Street Irregulars 176
Playing the Great Game 180
The Final Problem: Retroactive Continuity and Resurrecting
Sherlock Holmes 184
As Spectral as the Hound 188
Was the Later Holmes an Imposter? 193
Enchanting the Real and the Imagined 197
Works Cited 200
6 Afterword 205
Works Cited 212
Index 213