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Book series

January 26, 2023

A book series is a sequence of books having certain characteristics in common that are formally identified together as a group. Book series can be organized in different ways, such as written by the same author, or marketed as a group by their publisher.

Publishers' reprint series

 
Collection of the Penguin Books series Little Black Classics

Reprint series of public domain fiction (and sometimes nonfiction) books appeared as early as the 18th century, with the series The Poets of Great Britain Complete from Chaucer to Churchill (founded by British publisher John Bell in 1777).[1]

In 1841 the German Tauchnitz publishing firm launched the Collection of British and American Authors, a reprint series of inexpensive paperbound editions of both public domain and copyrighted fiction and nonfiction works.[2] This book series was unique for paying living authors of the works published even though copyright protection did not exist between nations in the 19th century.

Later British reprint series were to include the Routledge's Railway Library (George Routledge, 1848–99), the Oxford World's Classics (Oxford University Press, from 1901), the Everyman's Library (J. M. Dent, from 1906), the Penguin Classics (Penguin Books, from 1945) and the Penguin English Library (from 1963).

Reprint series were also published in the United States, including the Modern Library (Boni & Liveright, from 1917), in Germany, including the Universal-Bibliothek (Reclam, from 1867),[3] and in most other countries of the world.

Fiction books

A novel sequence is a set or series of novels which share common themes, characters, or settings, but where each novel has its own title and free-standing storyline, and can thus be read independently or out of sequence. A novel sequence contains story arcs or themes that cross over several books, rather than simply sharing one or more characters.

Fictional series typically share a common setting, story arc, set of characters or timeline. They are common in genre fiction, particularly crime fiction, adventure fiction, and speculative fiction, as well as in children's literature.

Some works in a series can stand alone—they can be read in any order, as each book makes few, if any, reference to past events, and the characters seldom, if ever, change. Many of these series books may be published in a numbered series. Examples of such series are works like The Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, and Nick Carter.

 
Collection of the seven books in the Harry Potter series

Some series do have their characters go through changes, and make references to past events. Typically such series are published in the order of their internal chronology, so that the next book published follows the previous book. How much these changes matter will vary from series to series (and reader to reader). For some, it may be minor—characters might get engaged, change jobs, etc., but it does not affect the main storyline. Examples of this type include Tony Hillerman's Jim Chee and Joe Leaphorn books. In other series, the changes are major and the books must be read in order to be fully enjoyed. Examples of this type include the Harry Potter series.

There are some book series that are not really proper series, but more of a single work so large that it must be published over two or more books. Examples of this type include The Lord of the Rings volumes or the Dark Tower series by Stephen King.

Some authors make it difficult to list their books in a numerical order when they do not release each work in its 'proper' order by the story's internal chronology. They might 'jump' back in time to early adventures of the characters, writing works that must be placed before or between previously published works. Thus, the books in a series are sometimes enumerated according to the internal chronology rather than in publication order, depending on the intended purpose for the list. Examples of this series include works from the Chronicles of Narnia, where the fifth book published, The Horse and His Boy, is actually set during the time of the first book, and the sixth book published, The Magician's Nephew is actually set long before the first book. This was done intentionally by C. S. Lewis, a scholar of medieval literature. Medieval literature did not always tell a story chronologically.

Definitions

There is no useful, formal demarcation between novel sequences and multi-part novels. Novels that are related may or may not fall into a clear sequence. It is also debatable whether a trilogy is long enough and whether its parts are discrete enough to qualify as a novel sequence.[citation needed]

For example, the Barchester novels of Anthony Trollope are only loosely related, although they contain a recurring cast of characters; his political novels about the Pallisers have a tighter connection and dynamic.[4] A strict definition might exclude both.

History

The novel sequence was a product of the nineteenth century, with James Fenimore Cooper's works appearing in the 1820s, and Anthony Trollope's Barchester books in the 1850s. In French literature, Honoré de Balzac's ambitious La Comédie humaine, a set of nearly 100 novels, novellas and short stories with some recurring characters, started to come together during the 1830s. Émile Zola's Rougon-Macquart cycle is a family saga, a format that later became a popular fictional form, going beyond the conventional three-volume novel.

A roman-fleuve (French, literally "river-novel") is an extended sequence of novels of which the whole acts as a commentary for a society or an epoch, and which continually deals with a central character, community or a saga within a family. The river metaphor implies a steady, broad dynamic lending itself to a perspective. Each volume makes up a complete novel by itself, but the entire cycle exhibits unifying characteristics.[5]

The metaphor of the roman-fleuve was coined by Romain Rolland to describe his 10-volume cycle Jean-Christophe. In the preface to the seventh volume, Dans la maison (1908/1909) he wrote: "When you see a man, do you ask yourself whether he is a novel or a poem? ... Jean-Christophe has always seemed to me to flow like a river; I have said as much from the first pages."

The term has subsequently been applied to other French novel sequences, particularly of the years between the world wars, notably:

The 19th-century predecessors may be distinguished as being rather "family sagas", as their stories are from the perspective of a single family, rather than society as a whole.

Marcel Proust's À la recherche du temps perdu has come to be regarded as a definitive roman fleuve. Today, however, its seven volumes are generally considered to be a single novel.[6]

Proust's work was immensely influential, particularly on British novelists of the middle of the twentieth century who did not favour modernism. Some of those follow the example of Anthony Powell,[7] a Proust disciple, but consciously adapting the technique to depict social change, rather than change in high society. This was a step beyond the realist novels of Arnold Bennett (the Clayhanger books) or John Galsworthy.

Twentieth century

The twenty-novel Aubrey-Maturin series by the English author Patrick O'Brian has been called perhaps the best-loved roman fleuve of the twentieth century: "[an] epic of two heroic yet believably realistic men that would in some ways define a generation".[8]

Development of the novel sequence

Although sequences of genre fiction are sometimes not considered to be romans-fleuves, novel sequences are particularly common in science fiction and epic fantasy genres.[citation needed]

The introduction of the preconstructed novel sequence is often attributed to E. E. Doc Smith, with his Lensman books.[citation needed] Such sequences, from contemporary authors, tend to be more clearly defined than earlier examples. Authors are now more likely to announce an overall series title, or write in round numbers such as 12 volumes. These characteristics are not those of the classical model forms, and become more like the franchises of the film industry.[citation needed]

Other examples

Publishers' nonfiction series

Main article: List of nonfiction book series

Notable nonfiction book series for the general public have included:

Academic and scholarly publications

Main article: Monographic series

In scholarly and academic publishing, scientific and non-fiction books that are released serially (in successive parts) once a year, or less often, are also called a series. (Publications that are released more often than once a year are known as periodicals.) The connection among books belonging to such a series can be by discipline, focus, approach, type of work, or geographic location. Examples of such series include the "Antwerp Working Papers in Linguistics", "Early English Manuscripts in Facsimile", "Garland Reference Library", "Canterbury Tales Project", "Early English Text Society", and "Cambridge Companions to Music".

Compared with editorial collection

Main article: Collection (publishing)

Book series can be compared with editorial collection, a type of serial publication which is common in the Romance-speaking world, especially in France. Although the two are similar in many ways, book series and editorial collection differ because books in a series generally have a common subject, character, or universe; in other words, a set of volumes that are related to each other by certain thematic elements. While books in a collection do not necessarily have a common subject, or a specific order, but with a certain affinity in the content of books (collections on art, on religion, on science...), as well as in the format, spine and page layout, even grammage, number of pages and style of typeface.[13][14]

See also

References

  1. ^ John Feather, A History of British Publishing, London: Croom Helm, 1988, p. 117.
  2. ^ Michael S. Suarez and H. R. Woudhuysen, eds., The Oxford Companion to the Book. Oxford University Press, 2010. Vol. 2. p. 1194.
  3. ^ Reclams Universal-Bibliothek (Philipp Reclam jun) - Book Series List (Buchreihe), publishinghistory.com. Retrieved 9 July 2019.
  4. ^ Felber, Lynette (1995). Gender and Genre in Novels Without End: The British Roman-fleuve. University Press of Florida. p. 33. ISBN 978-0-8130-1402-9.
  5. ^ Encyclopaedia Britannica
  6. ^ Douglas-Fairhurst, Robert. "In Search of Marcel Proust". The Observer, 17 November 2002.
  7. ^ Powell was an anti-modernist modernist, according to Christopher Hitchens; see Unacknowledged Legislation (2000) p. 197, Powell's Way, first published in the New York Review of Books 28 May 1998.
  8. ^ King, Dean (2000). Patrick O'Brian: A life revealed. London: Hodder & Stoughton. p. 207. ISBN 0-340-792558.
  9. ^ Prawer, Siegbert Salomon (2009). A Cultural Citizen of the World: Sigmund Freud's Knowledge and Use of British and American Writings. MHRA. p. 105. ISBN 978-1-906540-42-5.
  10. ^ a b c Scanlan, Margaret (14 July 2014). Traces of Another Time: History and Politics in Postwar British Fiction. Princeton University Press. p. 158. ISBN 978-1-4008-6093-7.
  11. ^ Great Lives (Gerald Duckworth & Co., Ltd), owu.edu. Retrieved 9 July 2019.
  12. ^ Teach Yourself (E.U.P./Hodder & Stoughton; Teach Yourself Books) - Book Series List, publishinghistory.com. Retrieved 9 July 2019.
  13. ^ "Collection, série et numéro". commission-fel-clil.org (in French). Retrieved 13 December 2021.
  14. ^ García Oliva, José (27 May 2008). "Colecciones y series: diferenciamos". diariodejerez.es (in Spanish). Retrieved 13 December 2021.

Further reading

  • Peter Harris. International Companion Encyclopedia of Children's Literature. London: Taylor & Francis, 2014.
  • Frank Arthur Mumby. Publishing and Bookselling: A History from the Earliest Times to the Present Day. London: Jonathan Cape, 1930. Revised edition, 1949.
  • Frank L. Schick. The Paperbound Book in America: The History of Paperbacks and Their European Background. New York: R. R. Bowker, 1958.
  • John Spiers, ed. The Culture of the Publisher’s Series. 2 vols. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011.
  • Jack David Zipes, ed. The Oxford Encyclopedia of Children's Literature. New York: Oxford University Press, Inc., 2006. 4 volumes.

External links

  • PublishingHistory.com - List of hardback and paperback book series with titles listed in each series
  • A Series of Series - List of hardback publisher’s book series with detailed historical commentary on each
  • FantasticFiction.com
  • FictFact.com
  • FictionDB.com
  • OrderOfBooks.com
  • StopYoureKillingMe.com
  • Vintage Series Books for Girls . . . and a Few for Boys
  • BookSeriesFinder.com

January 26, 2023
book, series, this, article, needs, additional, citations, verification, please, help, improve, this, article, adding, citations, reliable, sources, unsourced, material, challenged, removed, find, sources, news, newspapers, books, scholar, jstor, 2014, learn, . This article needs additional citations for verification Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources Unsourced material may be challenged and removed Find sources Book series news newspapers books scholar JSTOR May 2014 Learn how and when to remove this template message A book series is a sequence of books having certain characteristics in common that are formally identified together as a group Book series can be organized in different ways such as written by the same author or marketed as a group by their publisher Contents 1 Publishers reprint series 2 Fiction books 2 1 Definitions 2 2 History 2 3 Twentieth century 2 4 Development of the novel sequence 2 5 Other examples 3 Publishers nonfiction series 4 Academic and scholarly publications 5 Compared with editorial collection 6 See also 7 References 8 Further reading 9 External linksPublishers reprint series Edit Collection of the Penguin Books series Little Black Classics Reprint series of public domain fiction and sometimes nonfiction books appeared as early as the 18th century with the series The Poets of Great Britain Complete from Chaucer to Churchill founded by British publisher John Bell in 1777 1 In 1841 the German Tauchnitz publishing firm launched the Collection of British and American Authors a reprint series of inexpensive paperbound editions of both public domain and copyrighted fiction and nonfiction works 2 This book series was unique for paying living authors of the works published even though copyright protection did not exist between nations in the 19th century Later British reprint series were to include the Routledge s Railway Library George Routledge 1848 99 the Oxford World s Classics Oxford University Press from 1901 the Everyman s Library J M Dent from 1906 the Penguin Classics Penguin Books from 1945 and the Penguin English Library from 1963 Reprint series were also published in the United States including the Modern Library Boni amp Liveright from 1917 in Germany including the Universal Bibliothek Reclam from 1867 3 and in most other countries of the world Fiction books EditA novel sequence is a set or series of novels which share common themes characters or settings but where each novel has its own title and free standing storyline and can thus be read independently or out of sequence A novel sequence contains story arcs or themes that cross over several books rather than simply sharing one or more characters Fictional series typically share a common setting story arc set of characters or timeline They are common in genre fiction particularly crime fiction adventure fiction and speculative fiction as well as in children s literature Some works in a series can stand alone they can be read in any order as each book makes few if any reference to past events and the characters seldom if ever change Many of these series books may be published in a numbered series Examples of such series are works like The Hardy Boys Nancy Drew and Nick Carter Collection of the seven books in the Harry Potter series Some series do have their characters go through changes and make references to past events Typically such series are published in the order of their internal chronology so that the next book published follows the previous book How much these changes matter will vary from series to series and reader to reader For some it may be minor characters might get engaged change jobs etc but it does not affect the main storyline Examples of this type include Tony Hillerman s Jim Chee and Joe Leaphorn books In other series the changes are major and the books must be read in order to be fully enjoyed Examples of this type include the Harry Potter series There are some book series that are not really proper series but more of a single work so large that it must be published over two or more books Examples of this type include The Lord of the Rings volumes or the Dark Tower series by Stephen King Some authors make it difficult to list their books in a numerical order when they do not release each work in its proper order by the story s internal chronology They might jump back in time to early adventures of the characters writing works that must be placed before or between previously published works Thus the books in a series are sometimes enumerated according to the internal chronology rather than in publication order depending on the intended purpose for the list Examples of this series include works from the Chronicles of Narnia where the fifth book published The Horse and His Boy is actually set during the time of the first book and the sixth book published The Magician s Nephew is actually set long before the first book This was done intentionally by C S Lewis a scholar of medieval literature Medieval literature did not always tell a story chronologically Definitions Edit There is no useful formal demarcation between novel sequences and multi part novels Novels that are related may or may not fall into a clear sequence It is also debatable whether a trilogy is long enough and whether its parts are discrete enough to qualify as a novel sequence citation needed For example the Barchester novels of Anthony Trollope are only loosely related although they contain a recurring cast of characters his political novels about the Pallisers have a tighter connection and dynamic 4 A strict definition might exclude both History Edit The novel sequence was a product of the nineteenth century with James Fenimore Cooper s works appearing in the 1820s and Anthony Trollope s Barchester books in the 1850s In French literature Honore de Balzac s ambitious La Comedie humaine a set of nearly 100 novels novellas and short stories with some recurring characters started to come together during the 1830s Emile Zola s Rougon Macquart cycle is a family saga a format that later became a popular fictional form going beyond the conventional three volume novel A roman fleuve French literally river novel is an extended sequence of novels of which the whole acts as a commentary for a society or an epoch and which continually deals with a central character community or a saga within a family The river metaphor implies a steady broad dynamic lending itself to a perspective Each volume makes up a complete novel by itself but the entire cycle exhibits unifying characteristics 5 The metaphor of the roman fleuve was coined by Romain Rolland to describe his 10 volume cycle Jean Christophe In the preface to the seventh volume Dans la maison 1908 1909 he wrote When you see a man do you ask yourself whether he is a novel or a poem Jean Christophe has always seemed to me to flow like a river I have said as much from the first pages The term has subsequently been applied to other French novel sequences particularly of the years between the world wars notably Marcel Proust A la recherche du temps perdu 1908 22 Georges Duhamel Vie et aventures de Salavin 1920 32 and Chronique des Pasquier 1933 45 Roger Martin du Gard The Thibaults 1922 40 Jules Romains Les Hommes de bonne volonte 1932 47 Louis Aragon Cycle du monde reel 1933 51 Jacques Chardonne Les Destinees sentimentales 1934 36 The 19th century predecessors may be distinguished as being rather family sagas as their stories are from the perspective of a single family rather than society as a whole Marcel Proust s A la recherche du temps perdu has come to be regarded as a definitive roman fleuve Today however its seven volumes are generally considered to be a single novel 6 Proust s work was immensely influential particularly on British novelists of the middle of the twentieth century who did not favour modernism Some of those follow the example of Anthony Powell 7 a Proust disciple but consciously adapting the technique to depict social change rather than change in high society This was a step beyond the realist novels of Arnold Bennett the Clayhanger books or John Galsworthy Twentieth century Edit The twenty novel Aubrey Maturin series by the English author Patrick O Brian has been called perhaps the best loved roman fleuve of the twentieth century an epic of two heroic yet believably realistic men that would in some ways define a generation 8 Development of the novel sequence Edit Although sequences of genre fiction are sometimes not considered to be romans fleuves novel sequences are particularly common in science fiction and epic fantasy genres citation needed The introduction of the preconstructed novel sequence is often attributed to E E Doc Smith with his Lensman books citation needed Such sequences from contemporary authors tend to be more clearly defined than earlier examples Authors are now more likely to announce an overall series title or write in round numbers such as 12 volumes These characteristics are not those of the classical model forms and become more like the franchises of the film industry citation needed Other examples Edit Jacques Abeille s Le Cycle des contrees Louis Aragon s Cycle du Monde Reel Hirohiko Araki s JoJo s Bizarre Adventure A S Byatt s Frederica Potter quartet Jacques Chardonne s Les Destinees sentimentales James Fenimore Cooper s Leatherstocking Tales John Crowley s AEgypt Cycle Lawrence Durrell s Alexandria Quartet and other sequences Ford Madox Ford s Parade s End C S Forester s Horatio Hornblower series John Galsworthy s The Forsyte Saga 9 Carolyn Keene s Nancy Drew Mystery Stories Doris Lessing s Children of Violence 10 Naguib Mahfouz s The Cairo Trilogy Thomas Mann s Joseph and His Brothers Roger Martin du Gard s Les Thibault Yukio Mishima s The Sea of Fertility Anais Nin s Cities of the Interior Benito Perez Galdos s Episodios nacionales Anthony Powell s A Dance to the Music of Time 10 Dorothy Richardson s Pilgrimage Romain Rolland s Jean Christophe John Roman Baker s The Nick amp Greg Books Philip Roth s Zuckerman novels Paul Scott s Raj Quartet C P Snow s Strangers and Brothers 10 Anthony Trollope s Chronicles of Barsetshire and Palliser novels John Updike s Rabbit Angstrom books Henry Williamson s Chronicles of Ancient Sunlight A N Wilson s Lampitt PapersPublishers nonfiction series EditMain article List of nonfiction book series Notable nonfiction book series for the general public have included Architecture Pevsner Architectural Guides Biography The Republic of Letters Great Lives 11 History History of the Great War Science New Naturalist Library Self Instruction Teach Yourself 12 Sport Badminton Library Travel Murray s Handbooks for Travellers Blue GuidesAcademic and scholarly publications EditMain article Monographic series In scholarly and academic publishing scientific and non fiction books that are released serially in successive parts once a year or less often are also called a series Publications that are released more often than once a year are known as periodicals The connection among books belonging to such a series can be by discipline focus approach type of work or geographic location Examples of such series include the Antwerp Working Papers in Linguistics Early English Manuscripts in Facsimile Garland Reference Library Canterbury Tales Project Early English Text Society and Cambridge Companions to Music Compared with editorial collection EditMain article Collection publishing Book series can be compared with editorial collection a type of serial publication which is common in the Romance speaking world especially in France Although the two are similar in many ways book series and editorial collection differ because books in a series generally have a common subject character or universe in other words a set of volumes that are related to each other by certain thematic elements While books in a collection do not necessarily have a common subject or a specific order but with a certain affinity in the content of books collections on art on religion on science as well as in the format spine and page layout even grammage number of pages and style of typeface 13 14 See also Edit Novels portalList of children s book series Monographic series Sequel Continuation novel Tetralogy Trilogy VolumeReferences Edit John Feather A History of British Publishing London Croom Helm 1988 p 117 Michael S Suarez and H R Woudhuysen eds The Oxford Companion to the Book Oxford University Press 2010 Vol 2 p 1194 Reclams Universal Bibliothek Philipp Reclam jun Book Series List Buchreihe publishinghistory com Retrieved 9 July 2019 Felber Lynette 1995 Gender and Genre in Novels Without End The British Roman fleuve University Press of Florida p 33 ISBN 978 0 8130 1402 9 Encyclopaedia Britannica Douglas Fairhurst Robert In Search of Marcel Proust The Observer 17 November 2002 Powell was an anti modernist modernist according to Christopher Hitchens see Unacknowledged Legislation 2000 p 197 Powell s Way first published in the New York Review of Books 28 May 1998 King Dean 2000 Patrick O Brian A life revealed London Hodder amp Stoughton p 207 ISBN 0 340 792558 Prawer Siegbert Salomon 2009 A Cultural Citizen of the World Sigmund Freud s Knowledge and Use of British and American Writings MHRA p 105 ISBN 978 1 906540 42 5 a b c Scanlan Margaret 14 July 2014 Traces of Another Time History and Politics in Postwar British Fiction Princeton University Press p 158 ISBN 978 1 4008 6093 7 Great Lives Gerald Duckworth amp Co Ltd owu edu Retrieved 9 July 2019 Teach Yourself E U P Hodder amp Stoughton Teach Yourself Books Book Series List publishinghistory com Retrieved 9 July 2019 Collection serie et numero commission fel clil org in French Retrieved 13 December 2021 Garcia Oliva Jose 27 May 2008 Colecciones y series diferenciamos diariodejerez es in Spanish Retrieved 13 December 2021 Further reading EditPeter Harris International Companion Encyclopedia of Children s Literature London Taylor amp Francis 2014 Frank Arthur Mumby Publishing and Bookselling A History from the Earliest Times to the Present Day London Jonathan Cape 1930 Revised edition 1949 Frank L Schick The Paperbound Book in America The History of Paperbacks and Their European Background New York R R Bowker 1958 John Spiers ed The Culture of the Publisher s Series 2 vols London Palgrave Macmillan 2011 Jack David Zipes ed The Oxford Encyclopedia of Children s Literature New York Oxford University Press Inc 2006 4 volumes External links EditPublishingHistory com List of hardback and paperback book series with titles listed in each series A Series of Series List of hardback publisher s book series with detailed historical commentary on each FantasticFiction com FictFact com FictionDB com OrderOfBooks com StopYoureKillingMe com Vintage Series Books for Girls and a Few for Boys BookSeriesFinder com Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Book series amp oldid 1133691803, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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