The Surprising 18th-Century Origins of Fan Fiction
Once upon a time, writing and sharing fan fiction on the internet carried a distinct stigma. Extending other people’s universes or characters was widely seen as an outlet for the uncreative, the unsocial, and the sexually frustrated.
Those days are coming to an end.
Last year, the fan-created and curated website Archive of Our Own celebrated 10 years of collecting and organizing more than five million stories and other works of art in every conceivable fandom. In November, AO3—as the site is known—earned a Hugo Award for its contributions to science fiction and fantasy. A number of recent academic books have made strong cases for fan fiction’s ability to teach writing through online communities built on the shared love of a particular work. Well known authors such as Meg Cabot and Naomi Novik now proudly admit to getting their starts in the field.
Though fan fiction has a freshly burnished reputation and new are technically of and narratives. As entertaining as it may be to think about Dante’s as Biblical fanfic (), recognizably contemporary fan-fiction writing really got its start, at least in the Anglophone world, in the 18th century. Outside of academic circles, this historical background isn’t discussed much. But almost as soon as people started writing modern novels, readers began to find ways to continue the adventures of their favorite characters and share those stories with other enthusiasts.
