Twice upon a time: 10 fictional characters who are given a novel of their own

Shamela (1741), Henry Fielding

Henry Fielding never owned up to Shamela, but it is widely believed that he was the author of this satirical take on his contemporary Samuel Richardson's classic epistolary novel. The chaste and humble Pamela becomes an evil conniver and former prostitute in the retelling.

At Swim-Two-Birds (1939), Flann O’Brien

O’Brien’s unnamed student of Irish literature weaves many narrative threads together in his bid to have more than one beginning and one ending for a book. A main thread of O’Brien’s metafictional masterpiece consists of the adaptations of Irish legends Finn Mac Cool and Mad King Sweeney.

Wide Sargasso Sea (1966), Jean Rhys

Wide Sargasso Sea acts as a prequel to Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre, told from the perspective of the madwoman in the attic. Rhys reimagines the voice of the beautiful and fragile Antoinette Cosway, years before she is shipped to England to start her new life as Bertha Rochester.

Grendel (1971), John Garner

Taking the antagonist of the Anglo-Saxon epic poem Beowulf as its hero, Garner's novel explores the basic principles of Western civilisation through the eyes of the villain. The American author has said his Grendel is modelled on the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre.

The Mists of Avalon (1983), Marion Zimmer Bradley

The American science fiction and fantasy author revises the Arthurian legends from the perspective of its marginalised female characters. With King Arthur and the round table knights in supporting roles, the focus switches to the lives and conflicts of Morgaine, Gwenhwyfar, Viviane, Morgause and Igraine among others.

Jack Maggs (1997), Peter Carey

The Australian novelist Peter Carey relates the world of Great Expectations from the perspective of Abel Magwitch, also known as The Convict in Dickens's original book. Carey's protagonist Jack Maggs sets out on a journey to find his "son" Henry Phipps after his mysterious disappearance.

Ahab’s Wife (1999), Sena Jeter Naslund

With only brief references to Captain Ahab's wife in Melville's seafaring novel, the American novelist Sena Neter Jaslund imagines life back on dry land for her heroine Una Spenser, creating a compassionate world that is far away from the masculinity and obsession at the heart of Moby-Dick.

Gertrude and Claudius (2000), John Updike

Updike's prequel to the mass slaughter at Elsinore uses a number of sources for inspiration, among them Shakespeare's play, Saxo Grammaticus's 12th-century Historiae Danicae and Francois de Belleforest's Histoires tragiques. The novel ends before Act I: Sc 2 of Shakespeare's play, affording Hamlet, or Amleth, little stage time or chance for procrastinating.

The Wind Done Gone (2001), Alice Randall

Randall takes Margaret Mitchell's epic tale of the Deep South during the American civil war and relates it from the perspective of Cynara, a slave on Scarlett O'Hara's plantation. Cynara's name comes from the same Ernest Dowson poem that inspired the original title Gone With the Wind.

March (2005), Geraldine Brooks

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, March gives a voice to the absent father in Louisa May Alcott's all female world of Little Women. Plagued by his conscience, Mr March leaves his family to fight on the side of the abolitionists in the American civil war.