We all like to talk a lot about how many published books are really fanfic, but here's a particularly interesting instance.
Elinor Glyn's novel
Three Weeks was published in 1907. It's about a young Englishman named Paul Verdayne. He gets involved with a 6 foot tall clergyman's daughter with large red hands, and his horrified mother sends him off on a trip to Europe, where he meets, I don't know, the queen of an alternate universe Russia, I guess.
They have an affair, during which they have a lot of sex on a tiger skin ("Would you like to sin/With Elinor Glyn/On a tiger skin/Or would you prefer/To err with her/On some other fur?") and she educates him about life and teaches him to see beauty in the world and whatnot. Then her evil husband's agents track her down, and she has to leave Paul. He's struck down with brain fever and spends nine months moping. Then he's told that his lover (who is never given a name) has given birth to his son. He goes to visit, but the lady is murdered by her husband while Paul is literally waiting at the door of her house.
He spends about five years traveling and being completely miserable, but eventually he realizes that this isn't what his lady would have wanted, and begins to have a more positive outlook, and visits their son, the end.
It's totally ridiculous, and I've just read--and enjoyed--it for the fourth time.
Three Weeks caused a scandal when it came out because of its obvious approval of a married woman's affair with a much younger man, and of course because of all the sex on the tiger skin. And, of course, it was wildly popular.
One Day was published in 1909.
High Noon was published in 1911. Both were anonymous, unauthorized sequels to
Three Weeks.
One Day has Paul's son fall in love with an heiress from New Orleans, while in
High Noon Paul falls in love with the unnamed queen's sister, because apparently the queen bequeathed him to her. I'm only a quarter of the way into
One Day, but they obviously weren't written by the same person;
One Day is pretty dull, while
High Noon was just crazy. Or Paul was crazy in it. And there's this bit about how “a sombre warp of sorrow was now interwoven in the golden woof of his young happiness.”
Anyway.
Both books were written within a few years of the original. They were written by separate anonymous authors. And apparently this was okay. These books were allowed to be published.
One Day was even advertised in the back of at least one edition of
Three Weeks, and IMdB suggests that Elinor Glyn wrote the screenplay for a silent film adaptation of it, although I'm taking that with a grain of salt.
Was this a common thing? Are there more
Three Weeks sequels hidden somewhere? Did other books receive this kind of published tribute? Did Elinor Glyn really approve of
One Day, which really does no favors to Paul?
Neither of the sequels do any favors to Paul, actually. In
One Day, he's maudlin and boring, and in
High Noon he's insane. If I was capable of writing a romance novel I would do my own sequel, in which I would give Paul sense and good humor and a girl without too much crazy baggage. Unfortunately, I wouldn't be able to use the title "Three Weekends" because Elinor Glyn used it for a Clara Bow movie.
ETA: I just finished One Day, and--well, it turns out that it is by the same person as High Noon. It gets a lot less dull, and apparently Anonymous thinks insanity runs in the Verdayne family. I'm kind of disgusted, actually.
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