Fan Fiction in the Eighteenth-Century Literary Landscape

Chapter 5 examines the reciprocal relationship between authors and their readers who wrote fan fiction, illuminating the aesthetic consequences of fan fiction as part of a text’s dynamic reception. Based on close readings of key texts, including works by once-popular but now largely forgotten authors including Friedrich Nicolai, this chapter demonstrates the potential for interaction between works of fan fiction and their sources. Some source authors responded in footnotes and forewords to the unwanted appropriation of a character. Others wrote new chapters. And some, like Friederike Helene Unger, wrote entire sequels in response to the fan fiction they inspired. The result is a dense network of interlinked texts. This chapter contends that fan fiction gave rise to a unique form of collaborative authorship distinct from the so-called Romantic author.