Transfictional Character and Transmedia Storyworlds in the British Nineteenth Century by Erica Haugtvedt (review)

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• Transfictional Character and Transmedia Storyworlds in the British Nineteenth Century by Erica Haugtvedt
• Kristen Layne Figgins (bio)

Erica Haugtvedt, Transfictional Character and Transmedia Storyworlds in the British Nineteenth Century ( London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2022), pp. xii + 217, $119.99 cloth, $39.99 paperback.

Modern fandom is an exciting phenomenon: buying merch, cosplaying at conventions, and engaging in creative practices such as reading and writing fan fiction all bolster contemporary fan communities. As Erica Haugtvedt deftly argues in Transfictional Character and Transmedia Storyworlds in the British Nineteenth Century, not much has changed since the nineteenth [End Page 505] century. Haugtvedt examines the reception histories of some of nineteenth-century Britain's most popular texts and demonstrates how the approaches of fan communities across media formats help to create community-mediated understandings of character and storyworlds. The selections of media Haugtvedt addresses are diverse, including merchandising, penny dreadfuls, and theatrical productions, but nearly all show the ways in which fandom is a method of meaning-making, especially for the nineteenth century's working classes.

Haugtvedt's first chapter, "Introduction: From Novel Studies to Fan Studies," lays out several guiding principles. She is particularly interested in the "cognitive predisposition to orient narratives through the experiences of characters," even when those texts, as "allographic extensions," have different creators and potentially contradict one another (3). Haugtvedt's answer to this problem lies in psychology: we develop schemata for understanding a character. Audiences use these schemas to blend characters from different adaptations, reconciling different traits and characteristics and even vital plot elements into a cohesive whole. In this chapter, Haugtvedt also begins to frame nineteenth-century receptive practices as similar to modern conceptions of fandom, a theme that her book consistently reinforces, right down to the stigma that fans often experience. Notably different from modern fandom, however, are the effects of nineteenth-century copyright and plagiarism laws, which allow for transmedial fan appropriation that in effect authorizes so-called theft of stories and characters.

Haugtvedt's second chapter, "Pickwick Abroad (1837–1838): Transfictional Character as Permanent Object," focuses on the character of Mr. Pickwick from Charles Dickens's enormously popular The Pickwick Papers (1836–37). Pickwick, as a character, exemplifies how nineteenth-century audiences engage with character. In discussing George W. M. Reynolds's popular Pickwick Abroad, Haugtvedt notes Dickens's famous protectiveness around his creations, but she also shows that Dickens undermines himself by resurrecting Pickwick in Master Humphrey's Clock (1840–41): "The very existence of the continued afterlife of Mr. Pickwick and friends belies the possibility that they will not always stay the same as readers last, ostensibly, saw them, frozen in Dickens's narration" (54). While Dickens wants to have the last word on his creations, his nostalgic reinsertion of the character into Master Humphrey's Clock demonstrates a gap in Pickwick's life between his adventures in The Pickwick Papers and the current moment that readers will inevitably attempt to fill. Gaps indicate a permanence of character, or that Pickwick (like all characters) lives on beyond the page.

What happens when a character's permanency is threatened by fan remediation? In chapter 3, "Jack Sheppard (1839–1840): Class and Complex [End Page 506] Transfictional Character," Haugtvedt introduces an interesting example of adaptational extension that has its basis in the historical character of Jack Sheppard, a thief and prison escapee who was executed in the eighteenth century. He was resurrected almost immediately after his death in literary form, most famously by William Harrison Ainsworth's Bentley's Miscellany serial, Jack Sheppard (1839–40), and a flurry of theatrical adaptations. Particularly interesting to Haugtvedt is the ability of fans to rewrite canon—called "fanon" in fandom studies—even when that requires them to hold space for conflicting versions of the same character. Haugtvedt argues that fanon allows for the working-class fans of Jack Sheppard to reclaim his narrative in a remediative way.

In chapter 4, "Trilby (1894) in the Marketplace: fin de siècle Merchandising and Transfictional Character as Branded Object," Haugtvedt explores the kind of sensational mania that we often associate with modern fandom. Its locus is George du Maurier's character Trilby, whom du Maurier objectifies in multiple ways...