Similar Creations
An earlier proponent of this sort of fiction was William S. Baring-Gould, who wrote a fictional biography of Sherlock Holmes. In 1977 C. W. Scott-Giles, an expert in heraldry, published a history of Lord Peter Wimsey's family, going back to 1066 (but describing the loss of the family tree going back to Adam and Eve); the book is based on material from his correspondence with Dorothy L. Sayers, who wrote at least two of the family anecdotes in the book, one of them in the French language of the Middle Ages. For details, see Duke of Denver.
Warren Ellis's comic book series Planetary has a similar premise of fitting many different superhero, science fiction, and fantasy elements into the same universe. (For the most part, constrained by the needs of the story and copyright, Ellis does not use the originals but rather his own re-interpretations of the archetypes). Author Kim Newman has stated that his Anno Dracula series was partially inspired by the Wold Newton family.
The anthology series Tales of the Shadowmen edited by Jean-Marc Lofficier is also based on the Wold Newton concept and includes characters from French literature.
Alan Moore did likewise in his The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen comic book (and its sequels) in which various Victorian era literary characters meet and join up with the eponymous League (though they are not descended from a single family). Over the course of the series, the world of the League began to incorporate many works of fiction from many different eras—not just Victorian literature—into its universe. Moore calls the Wold Newton stories "a seminal influence upon the League".
Read more about this topic: Wold Newton Family
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“After all, poets shouldn’t be their own interpreters and shouldn’t carefully dissect their poems into everyday prose; that would mean the end of being poets. Poets send their creations into the world, it is up to the reader, the aesthetician, and the critic to determine what they wanted to say with their creations.”
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