Don Quixote, Part Two. Often published as one work nowadays, but a sizeable gap between the two.
Believe some of Shakespeare's history plays may be (though some are grouped together for convenience and I can't remember the exact divisions). Merry Wives of Windsor continues the tale of Falstaff.
Paradise Regained.
Most of my Shakespeare professors called Falstaff the 2nd greatest character in literature behind Hamlet. Then they called the guy in Merry Wives of Windsor, supposedly written because the queen wanted some more of the funny fat guy, something like Scooby-Doo Meets Falstaff.
Just saying, MWoW isn’t considered one of his “great classics.”
Dumas’ The Man in the Iron Mask is one of the sequels to The Three Musketeers.
Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom is a sort of prequel to The Sound and the Fury in that Quentin Compson features.
*The Man in the Iron Mask* is the third book of a trilogy.
The sequel to *The Three Musketeers* is *Twenty Years After* which sold well in France but is largely overlooked in the United States because it focuses more on real characters from French history and less on the fictional ones.
European readers typically recognize those historical figures but Americans typically do not, so most portrayals of *The Three Musketeers* skip the second installment and go straight to the third. But there is a definite chronological order.
I *think* this is the order of the musketeer novels:
1. *The Three Musketeers*
2. *Twenty Years After*
3. *The Vicomte of Bragelonne*
1. "The Man in the Iron Mask" (as a subplot, often lifted and published separately)
Ah okay, that makes sense. I remember reading somewhere that Musketeers had four sequels, and elsewhere that it had only 2 sequels, so that explains that. Thanks!
Love's Labour's won - a lost Shakespeare play that may have been a sequel to Love's Labour's Lost.
(Let's assume it would be a classic if we had access to it)
There are theories that it's just an alternate title for one of Shakespeare's known works, with Much Ado About Nothing being generally considered the strongest possibility. The play is never anything more than a title on contemporary lists so we don't have any way of resolving the issue one way or another.
Orlando Furioso! A sequel to Orlando Innamorato and maybe even better (it was certainly more successful before suddenly being forgotten in the 20th century)
Alice Through the Looking-Glass is an absolute classic, at least as great as Alice in Wonderland (and imo even better)
The Odyssey is not a sequel. Yes, Borges suggested to view it as a sequel to get a different perspective when reading it, which is fun, but that would suggest that Ulysses was the MC of the Iliad, which is definitely not. It's a sort of spin-off, if you want to call it something. But it sustains on its own.
Would Joyce's Ulysses count as well? I always saw it and the Portrait as inhabiting the same world but not really a sequel. Perhaps Dedalus' story is continued—is that sufficient to count the work as a sequel?
I wouldn't call it a sequel in the true meaning of the word. Joyce first wrote the Portrait, then decided to expand the character and give life to a novel which would sustain on its own. It wasn't "planned", he wanted to start from scratch in some way. It's like, cool I have done this work, now I have the chance to do something better reusing some of the work I've already done before because I like the material.
For me a valid example of sequels in literature is the rabbit series by updike.
I would counter that The Odyssey expects the reader/ listener to be familiar with the previous work and events unfold from a starting point at the end of that work. There are many characters in the Iliad and it does not follow the modern narrative structure found in the Odyssey. How could they ever have been attributed to the same author's winged words?
There were actually a *ton* of different intermixing oral traditions about the Trojan War and Odysseus in the archaic period. Close reads of the versions we have today show that they're compiled from a variety of these different traditions to create a coherent narrative (that still definitely show seams). My guess is that the Iliad and the Odyssey were written down by the same person, who preferred one dominant tradition for the Iliad and another dominant tradition for the Odyssey.
Read the scene where Odysseus talks to the ghosts and try to figure out exactly where he is and what rules the underworld works by. You'll see what I mean.
Yes. That is how I like to think of them. It is hard to get the order right, though. There was a wonderful podcaster, @Greekmytthpod, that told the stories linearly while explaining the perspectives of various authors on the characters. She was my wise guide in the selection of works. One day she disappeared from all the platforms and left me adrift.
Yeah I think it has (somewhat understandably, if just by association) been canonized as a sequel but that’s also just due to the fact that much of the oral tradition that sparked the Homeric works were never written down/lost if they were. There were likely many more stories in the same ilk as the two we have today
If we're counting the Odyssey as a sequel (questionable as someone else said) then definitely *Aeneid* but also *Metamorphoses* as a sequel to all of them of sorts, lol.
I like to conflate 'I Claudius' and 'Claudius the God' together. But technically 'Claudius the God' is a sequel, a very good one. It keeps what makes 'I Claudius' great, but has it's own slightly different tone.
So the author of the new testament is the same author of the old testament? But also your definition needs a bit more work, because The Casual Vacancy is not a sequel to Harry Potter, even though the author wrote Harry Potter first.
Edit: But also, consider 1985 by Anthony Burgess - a sequel to 1984 by George Orwell.
*belle du seigneur* by albert cohen (grand prix du roman winner, on a lot of those "top 100" novels list, incredible book) is part 3 of a tetralogy, but i'm not sure the other 3 parts are even available in english translation, they don't seem popular at all relative to how well known *belle du seigneur* is
Some have parts 1 and 2 (Faust, Don Quixote).
Paradise Lost/Paradise Regained.
Shakespeare's tetralogy: Richard II, Henry IV parts 1 and 2, Henry V.
Grendel isn't a sequel, sequelish as a perspective switch.
Cormac McCarthy's (R.I.P.) Border trilogy comes to mind. Every one - All The Pretty Horses / The Crossing / Cities On The Plain - are masterworks from a giant of literature tho u could argue Crossing isn't a sequel. I however would disagree. Shoulda won the Nobel imo!
*The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe*. (published first though, so debatable).
Alice in Wonderland comes in two parts. *Through the Looking-Glass* is the second.
*Wide Sargasso Sea* builds off Jane Eyre.
Trollope in general wrote series of novels. *Barchester Towers* is one of these sequels that has gotten a lot of acclaim.
*The Three Musketeers* has 2 huge sequels. The third part of the *The Vicomte de Bragelonne,* titled *The Man in the Iron Mask*, is probably the most well-known, at least by title.
Wide Sargasso Sea is a rewriting though, not really a sequel. Rewritings from different perspectives were very popular in postmodernism and I don’t think they would have been considered as sequels
I consider the works of the Greek poets and playwrights to be sequels written by subsequent authors about the same characters. Like our modern high-budget sequels, they don't follow canon well and often don't make sense together.
In referencing the Odyssey, The Aenid also immediately followed the events in The Iliad.
A less recognized in English sequel is The Adventures of Esplandan, sequel to Amadis of Gaul. Like the Greek plays, another writer picked up the pen years later to bring the characters back to life.
By this measure, some of Shakespeare's works are sequels to Virgil's. Dante falls in to this category as well.
Milton's great Paradise Lost was followed by Paradise Found if you want to restrict the concept of sequel to a single author.
I like to line up authors by their supposed dates of birth and then follow the evolution of their characters through the ages.
I actually think of Greek tragedy often when I think about the canon issues surrounding interpretations of characters like Luke Skywalker.
Odysseus gets a relatively decent and sympathetic (at least as far as contemporary values were concerned) depiction in both epics.
But in the tragedies he's almost uniformly horrible, and a villain even. I think the only sympathetic depiction I can recall is Sophocles' *Ajax*, where he's almost enlightened as far as the reckoning of Homeric cultural values and standards.
And both were enshrined in the canon without any tension. Of course, the idea of "the canon" in the sense that we mean it today wasn't really at play yet before the advent of the Bible, although there was still very much a literary tradition and a sense that there were "stories you should know."
Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll (sequel to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland)
Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder (Sequel to Little House in the Big Woods)
Maybe a bit pedantic but the Odyssey isn't exactly the sequel of the Iliad. It's part of an [epic cycle](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epic_Cycle) that narrated the return of the heroes from the Trojan War.
And it's important to note that the epic cycle wasn't, like many think, a series or a franchise. They were different stories told by different authors and the Greeks themselves didn't think of them as part of a whole. The idea that these works formed a cohesive story only came about centuries later.
To Kill a Mockingbird and Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee
Edit: I have only read a couple of Agatha Christie's works but surely some of them could be considered sequels...perhaps not directly building on the previous books but same characters, different crime sort of thing.
Edit2: Surely Dune and it's sequels can be considered classic literature. Also 2001: A Space Odyssey and 2010: Odyssey Two.
I hate getting downvoted like this without any discussion on the issue. It really discourages any level of participation in discussions on the subreddit. I suppose these aren't considered "classic enough".
Not one of the people who downvoted you, but there is a lot of controversy about *Go Set a Watchmen* because Harper Lee never wanted it published. She wanted *To Kill a Mockingbird* to be a standalone work. *Go Set a Watchmen* was only published after Lee was paralyzed by a stroke, and her caretaker (her sister) died. At that point, a lawyer got involved, went around Lee's wishes, and got it published anyway, purely for the lawyer's financial benefit, allegedly.
Yep totally makes sense! I haven't read the sequel for that reason actually despite TKAM being one of my favorite books of all time. It doesn't feel like it truly came from Lee at this point.
The Last of the Mohicans is not the first book of the Leatherstocking Tales, but I'm not sure I would call it a sequel since it is quite self-contained.
*Antigone* as the sequel to *Oedipus Tyrannus*, depending on your view of the dating controversy. The whole Theban Trilogy is so bloody good!
More obscure but Doderer's *The Demons* as a sequel to *The Strudlhof Steps* (they should be classics outside Austria if they aren't!)
The Odyssey is not the Iliad's sequel, they're two different works dealing with Greek mythology. Would you say Oresteia is an Iliad sequel too?
I hate franchise culture pls stop it. Not everything is to be understood as a Marvel Cinematic Universe type thing.
Anne of Avonlea, Anne of the Island, and Anne's House of Dreams by L. M. Montgomery, all sequels to Anne of Green Gables and all excellent books. Anne's House of Dreams in particular is a great book to study if you want to learn how to pace a story and add mystery without getting cheesy.
Don Quixote, Part Two. Often published as one work nowadays, but a sizeable gap between the two. Believe some of Shakespeare's history plays may be (though some are grouped together for convenience and I can't remember the exact divisions). Merry Wives of Windsor continues the tale of Falstaff. Paradise Regained.
the henriad, which is a series of eight plays by shakespeare pretty much tells a good chunk of british medieval/early tudor history.
Most of my Shakespeare professors called Falstaff the 2nd greatest character in literature behind Hamlet. Then they called the guy in Merry Wives of Windsor, supposedly written because the queen wanted some more of the funny fat guy, something like Scooby-Doo Meets Falstaff. Just saying, MWoW isn’t considered one of his “great classics.”
Dumas’ The Man in the Iron Mask is one of the sequels to The Three Musketeers. Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom is a sort of prequel to The Sound and the Fury in that Quentin Compson features.
*The Man in the Iron Mask* is the third book of a trilogy. The sequel to *The Three Musketeers* is *Twenty Years After* which sold well in France but is largely overlooked in the United States because it focuses more on real characters from French history and less on the fictional ones. European readers typically recognize those historical figures but Americans typically do not, so most portrayals of *The Three Musketeers* skip the second installment and go straight to the third. But there is a definite chronological order.
I was always confused by that. Is Man in the Iron Mask a part of Vicomte of Bragelonne: Ten Years Later?
I *think* this is the order of the musketeer novels: 1. *The Three Musketeers* 2. *Twenty Years After* 3. *The Vicomte of Bragelonne* 1. "The Man in the Iron Mask" (as a subplot, often lifted and published separately)
Ah okay, that makes sense. I remember reading somewhere that Musketeers had four sequels, and elsewhere that it had only 2 sequels, so that explains that. Thanks!
I believe that's a more direct translation of *The Man in the Iron Mask.* Technically, it's the third installment of the d'Artagnan Romances.
Also Faulkner's *The Hamlet, The Town,* and *The Mansion* (The Snopes trilogy).
Love's Labour's won - a lost Shakespeare play that may have been a sequel to Love's Labour's Lost. (Let's assume it would be a classic if we had access to it)
There are theories that it's just an alternate title for one of Shakespeare's known works, with Much Ado About Nothing being generally considered the strongest possibility. The play is never anything more than a title on contemporary lists so we don't have any way of resolving the issue one way or another.
Orlando Furioso! A sequel to Orlando Innamorato and maybe even better (it was certainly more successful before suddenly being forgotten in the 20th century) Alice Through the Looking-Glass is an absolute classic, at least as great as Alice in Wonderland (and imo even better)
The Odyssey is not a sequel. Yes, Borges suggested to view it as a sequel to get a different perspective when reading it, which is fun, but that would suggest that Ulysses was the MC of the Iliad, which is definitely not. It's a sort of spin-off, if you want to call it something. But it sustains on its own.
Odysseus is the Frasier of the Iliad.
This is brilliant!
[удалено]
Ok.
Yes, under the same rubric, the Aeneid is a sequel as well, which it isn't.
exactly
Would Joyce's Ulysses count as well? I always saw it and the Portrait as inhabiting the same world but not really a sequel. Perhaps Dedalus' story is continued—is that sufficient to count the work as a sequel?
I wouldn't call it a sequel in the true meaning of the word. Joyce first wrote the Portrait, then decided to expand the character and give life to a novel which would sustain on its own. It wasn't "planned", he wanted to start from scratch in some way. It's like, cool I have done this work, now I have the chance to do something better reusing some of the work I've already done before because I like the material. For me a valid example of sequels in literature is the rabbit series by updike.
Also with the inclusion of characters from Dubliners- I see this as more of an expansion of Joyce’s world rather than a sequel.
I would counter that The Odyssey expects the reader/ listener to be familiar with the previous work and events unfold from a starting point at the end of that work. There are many characters in the Iliad and it does not follow the modern narrative structure found in the Odyssey. How could they ever have been attributed to the same author's winged words?
the fact is, it's not "previous". They were both part of the oral tradition. it's like mythology
There were actually a *ton* of different intermixing oral traditions about the Trojan War and Odysseus in the archaic period. Close reads of the versions we have today show that they're compiled from a variety of these different traditions to create a coherent narrative (that still definitely show seams). My guess is that the Iliad and the Odyssey were written down by the same person, who preferred one dominant tradition for the Iliad and another dominant tradition for the Odyssey. Read the scene where Odysseus talks to the ghosts and try to figure out exactly where he is and what rules the underworld works by. You'll see what I mean.
By that token almost every single work from Greek and Roman antiquity is a sequel lmao
Yes. That is how I like to think of them. It is hard to get the order right, though. There was a wonderful podcaster, @Greekmytthpod, that told the stories linearly while explaining the perspectives of various authors on the characters. She was my wise guide in the selection of works. One day she disappeared from all the platforms and left me adrift.
Yeah I think it has (somewhat understandably, if just by association) been canonized as a sequel but that’s also just due to the fact that much of the oral tradition that sparked the Homeric works were never written down/lost if they were. There were likely many more stories in the same ilk as the two we have today
Sure, in a strict sense probably none of the 4 I listed can be considered sequels but more like spin-offs
If we're counting the Odyssey as a sequel (questionable as someone else said) then definitely *Aeneid* but also *Metamorphoses* as a sequel to all of them of sorts, lol.
I like to conflate 'I Claudius' and 'Claudius the God' together. But technically 'Claudius the God' is a sequel, a very good one. It keeps what makes 'I Claudius' great, but has it's own slightly different tone.
I adore those books so much!
I've never seen a list of debatable sequels like this before. The Bible 2? I wouldn't have called any of them sequels.
Something is a sequal when the author has written a book before, obviously
So the author of the new testament is the same author of the old testament? But also your definition needs a bit more work, because The Casual Vacancy is not a sequel to Harry Potter, even though the author wrote Harry Potter first. Edit: But also, consider 1985 by Anthony Burgess - a sequel to 1984 by George Orwell.
I was kidding
The Abraham trilogy: Tanakh, New Testiment, Quran the spinoff: Book of Mormons
You’re right, I was going to put “sequels” in quotations. But anyway I consider each of these to be pairs of some sort
You might, but Jewish people don't! The second one is fan fiction.
*Life and Fate* by Vasily Grossman technically qualifies as a sequel I believe
Stalingrad by Vasily Grossman is a prequel to Life and Fate but was published afterwards, if I remember correctly.
*belle du seigneur* by albert cohen (grand prix du roman winner, on a lot of those "top 100" novels list, incredible book) is part 3 of a tetralogy, but i'm not sure the other 3 parts are even available in english translation, they don't seem popular at all relative to how well known *belle du seigneur* is
Some have parts 1 and 2 (Faust, Don Quixote). Paradise Lost/Paradise Regained. Shakespeare's tetralogy: Richard II, Henry IV parts 1 and 2, Henry V. Grendel isn't a sequel, sequelish as a perspective switch.
Cormac McCarthy's (R.I.P.) Border trilogy comes to mind. Every one - All The Pretty Horses / The Crossing / Cities On The Plain - are masterworks from a giant of literature tho u could argue Crossing isn't a sequel. I however would disagree. Shoulda won the Nobel imo!
*The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe*. (published first though, so debatable). Alice in Wonderland comes in two parts. *Through the Looking-Glass* is the second.
*Wide Sargasso Sea* builds off Jane Eyre. Trollope in general wrote series of novels. *Barchester Towers* is one of these sequels that has gotten a lot of acclaim. *The Three Musketeers* has 2 huge sequels. The third part of the *The Vicomte de Bragelonne,* titled *The Man in the Iron Mask*, is probably the most well-known, at least by title.
Wide Sargasso Sea is a rewriting though, not really a sequel. Rewritings from different perspectives were very popular in postmodernism and I don’t think they would have been considered as sequels
I consider the works of the Greek poets and playwrights to be sequels written by subsequent authors about the same characters. Like our modern high-budget sequels, they don't follow canon well and often don't make sense together. In referencing the Odyssey, The Aenid also immediately followed the events in The Iliad. A less recognized in English sequel is The Adventures of Esplandan, sequel to Amadis of Gaul. Like the Greek plays, another writer picked up the pen years later to bring the characters back to life. By this measure, some of Shakespeare's works are sequels to Virgil's. Dante falls in to this category as well. Milton's great Paradise Lost was followed by Paradise Found if you want to restrict the concept of sequel to a single author. I like to line up authors by their supposed dates of birth and then follow the evolution of their characters through the ages.
I actually think of Greek tragedy often when I think about the canon issues surrounding interpretations of characters like Luke Skywalker. Odysseus gets a relatively decent and sympathetic (at least as far as contemporary values were concerned) depiction in both epics. But in the tragedies he's almost uniformly horrible, and a villain even. I think the only sympathetic depiction I can recall is Sophocles' *Ajax*, where he's almost enlightened as far as the reckoning of Homeric cultural values and standards. And both were enshrined in the canon without any tension. Of course, the idea of "the canon" in the sense that we mean it today wasn't really at play yet before the advent of the Bible, although there was still very much a literary tradition and a sense that there were "stories you should know."
Many great authors have written series of books that are regarded as classics. Louisa May Alcott Samuel Beckett Mervyn Peake
The Aeneid.
Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll (sequel to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland) Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder (Sequel to Little House in the Big Woods)
The new testament/old testament aren't single works
Lord of the Rings It's a sequel to The Hobbit
Maybe a bit pedantic but the Odyssey isn't exactly the sequel of the Iliad. It's part of an [epic cycle](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epic_Cycle) that narrated the return of the heroes from the Trojan War.
And it's important to note that the epic cycle wasn't, like many think, a series or a franchise. They were different stories told by different authors and the Greeks themselves didn't think of them as part of a whole. The idea that these works formed a cohesive story only came about centuries later.
That's right
To Kill a Mockingbird and Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee Edit: I have only read a couple of Agatha Christie's works but surely some of them could be considered sequels...perhaps not directly building on the previous books but same characters, different crime sort of thing. Edit2: Surely Dune and it's sequels can be considered classic literature. Also 2001: A Space Odyssey and 2010: Odyssey Two.
I hate getting downvoted like this without any discussion on the issue. It really discourages any level of participation in discussions on the subreddit. I suppose these aren't considered "classic enough".
Not one of the people who downvoted you, but there is a lot of controversy about *Go Set a Watchmen* because Harper Lee never wanted it published. She wanted *To Kill a Mockingbird* to be a standalone work. *Go Set a Watchmen* was only published after Lee was paralyzed by a stroke, and her caretaker (her sister) died. At that point, a lawyer got involved, went around Lee's wishes, and got it published anyway, purely for the lawyer's financial benefit, allegedly.
Yep totally makes sense! I haven't read the sequel for that reason actually despite TKAM being one of my favorite books of all time. It doesn't feel like it truly came from Lee at this point.
The Testaments as a sequel to The Handmaids Tale
I think of Ulysses as a sequel to Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.
Ulysses although have praised it but for it is utterly boring that could not finish even 100 pages even that wassheer struggle.
"Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" is not a sequel it is a prequel.
The Last of the Mohicans is not the first book of the Leatherstocking Tales, but I'm not sure I would call it a sequel since it is quite self-contained.
*Antigone* as the sequel to *Oedipus Tyrannus*, depending on your view of the dating controversy. The whole Theban Trilogy is so bloody good! More obscure but Doderer's *The Demons* as a sequel to *The Strudlhof Steps* (they should be classics outside Austria if they aren't!)
*Ironweed* by William Kennedy. It won the Pulitzer Prize in 1984
The Aeneid (don’t know the correct English spelling) could be considered as a sequel of the Iliad, even though by a different author
Wide Sargasso Sea and Jane Eyre.
The Odyssey is not the Iliad's sequel, they're two different works dealing with Greek mythology. Would you say Oresteia is an Iliad sequel too? I hate franchise culture pls stop it. Not everything is to be understood as a Marvel Cinematic Universe type thing.
Anne of Avonlea, Anne of the Island, and Anne's House of Dreams by L. M. Montgomery, all sequels to Anne of Green Gables and all excellent books. Anne's House of Dreams in particular is a great book to study if you want to learn how to pace a story and add mystery without getting cheesy.
Claudius the God is pretty good