Little-Known Spinoffs of Classic Works

You may have already read a few follow-ups to famous novels, some of which became even more well-known than the originals themselves (e.g., Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, based on a character first introduced in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer). But what about those sad sequels and spinoffs that failed to gain much popularity? Here’s a roundup of a few of our favorites:

O, Dadsseus, by Homer (?)
When Odysseus returns to Ithaca after the ten-year absence and perilous journey chronicled in Homer’s epic poem The Odyssey, his son, Telemachus, is grateful to have him back home safely—but he’s also furious at all the baseball games and school plays his father missed! This obscure sequel to The Odyssey is a heartwarming family drama about the power of parental love. Though it is widely attributed to Homer, to this day its exact origins remain a mystery—and the scene in which Odysseus and Telemachus sign up for a father-son obstacle course, with hilarious and deadly results, is claimed by scholars to have “a really Sophoclean vibe” to it.

The Birnam Wood Diaries, by William Shakespeare
The enduring popularity of Shakespeare’s tragic masterpiece Macbeth has long cast a shadow over its less admired spinoff, The Birnam Wood Diaries, a short, darkly comic play that follows the exploits of Banquo’s ghost as he opens a successful fro-yo shop just outside Dunsinane Castle. Although Macbeth has been performed countless times by innumerable acting troupes, The Birnam Wood Diaries has been mostly overlooked throughout history, though it did inspire a critically panned miniseries on Starz in the late 1790s, as well as the modern Pinkberry frozen yogurt franchise, which to this day offers a topping called Macduff Crunch.

From Karenin, With Love, by Leo Tolstoy
Even the most avid Tolstoy fans may have skipped this world-renowned author’s failed effort to inject a little levity into his legacy. His widely disparaged sequel to the tragic novel Anna Karenina chronicles the adventures of Anna’s lovelorn, widowed husband, whose friends pushed him to get back out into the dating scene shortly after her untimely death. The scene in which Alexei Karenin takes a coworker’s sister on an outing to a carnival and is unable to win her a giant stuffed penguin after fifteen rounds of ring-toss may well go down as one of the most unintentionally awkward depictions of early romance in literary history. The novel’s formulaic ending, during which Karenin is forced to stand up for himself and confront Count Vronksy in a bar after the Count hits on a waitress Karenin is pretty sure has a thing for him, was viewed by many readers as implausible and hackneyed.

Little Bird in the Big City, by Edgar Allan Poe
Only a few dedicated American literary scholars are aware that Edgar Allan Poe’s haunting narrative poem The Raven was not the end of the story. In the author’s unsuccessful spinoff, Little Bird in the Big City, the Raven flies to Baltimore and finds work as a delivery bird for a local pizza joint, where he befriends a group of kooky, lovable misfits and eventually finds love with a girl raven. Historians have suggested that Poe was looking for a merchandising tie-in opportunity with this arguably mediocre follow-up effort; this theory was validated by the recent discovery in the National Archives of several tea-cozies embroidered with the bird’s signature catchphrase from the second novel, which had changed from “Nevermore” to “That’s so Raven!”

The Bertha Mason Trilogy, by Charlotte Brontë
The breakout character of Charlotte Brontë’s seminal novel Jane Eyre was, of course, Mr. Rochester’s insane wife, Bertha Mason, who managed to inspire a massive and dedicated fan base despite spending much of the novel locked in the attic at Thornfield Manor, which she later burned to the ground. Bertha’s character was so beloved by readers that Brontë later resurrected her, explaining that the fire in which she was reported to have perished had not actually killed her, but had only cured her insanity, and also given her the power to read minds along with killer martial arts skills. Bertha Mason went on to star in her own suspense trilogy, the first book of which was titled Bertha Mason: Vampyre Pursuer, in which she became a supernatural crime fighter. She was falsely accused of avenging herself against Jane Eyre and Edward Rochester in Bertha Mason: Justice Done, and later fought to clear her name in The Bertha Mason Ultimatum.