British fictional characters--so many wonderful ones!

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This is a topic that I have been trying to find time to start since before Christmas!

Have you ever considered how MANY amazing, wondrous fictional characters have been created by British writers? Many of these characters have been around for decades, and continue to be popular, have movies and TV shows made, and sell books, sequels, toys, Christmas ornaments, and other doo dads, as well as vintage items.

Is there something about Britain that produces great imaginations in its people? Or do other nations have as many great fictional characters, but they haven’t made it to America yet, and/or haven’t been translated into English.

Following are a few examples of my favorites. Please add more if you have any favorites!

Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson–I have been a fan for over 50 years, since 6th grade!!! LOVE the Holmes/Watson canon!

James Bond–fan since high school!

The Avengers–John Steed, Kathy Gale, Emma Peel, Tara King! An amazing series, and the episodes are great stories to this day.

Dr Who!!! My husband and I started watching this in college back in the 70s–and we still love it!

Harry Potter–not a fan, but my husband and daughter are super fans!

The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings–not a fan, my husband is is a super duper fan!

The Chronicles of Narnia world–definitely a fan!

King Arthur–or was this real? Not sure, but there have certainly been a large number of fictional works about him and all his knights and ladies.

the Dickens characters, especially the characters in A Christmas Carol, and of course, Oliver Twist! Mr. Scrooge and Bob Cratchit and the ghosts have been made into so many movies and plays!

Mary Poppins–we saw the new movie last night and loved it. Loved the old one, too!

Winnie the Pooh!

Robin Hood and and his gang! (He wasn’t real, was he? I think he’s fiction.)

all of William Shakespeare’s characters! some were based on real people, but characters like Romeo and Juliet were created by the Bard!

Frankenstein (Mary Shelley was English!)

Dorian Gray (Oscar Wilde)

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Robert Louis Stevenson)–one of my favorites

Dracula!!! Bram Stoker, an English author, wrote this, and before him, several other English authors created other fictional vampires.

Dr. Dolittle (Hugh Lofting, a British author)

so who have I missed?
 
How could you forget Mr Darcy!?! 😛

Also, Hercule Poirot. Well technically he’s Belgian, but the author is British. Are we talking about characters that are British or just written by British authors?

(I’m thinking way too hard about this.)
 
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G.K. Chesterton’s Father Brown! This is a Catholic site!

Not only a Priest but a detective worthy of comparison to Sherlock Holmes.
 
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I think the reason we here in USA see so many great British characters is that
  • the books are in English
  • we relate to them because US culture primarily came from England
  • lots of US people study English literature in high school or college
  • England was a pretty dominant culture during the Victorian and Edwardian era and certain authors were very prolific and pervasive.
US literature, though much younger than UK’s, has some awesome characters such as Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn. Many other countries have some great literary characters who haven’t been as widely read, even if translated. For example, there are a bunch of comical books from Italy about a priest named Don Camillo who feuds with the communist mayor of his town and usually gets the best of him. Czech Republic has the very popular Good Soldier Svejk (aka Schweik). And if you go to Australia, they have all kinds of popular animal characters in their children’s literature that we’ve mostly never heard of.
 
Peeps said:
This is a topic that I have been trying to find time to start since before Christmas!

Have you ever considered how MANY amazing, wondrous fictional characters have been created by British writers? Many of these characters have been around for decades, and continue to be popular, have movies and TV shows made, and sell books, sequels, toys, Christmas ornaments, and other doo dads, as well as vintage items.

Is there something about Britain that produces great imaginations in its people? Or do other nations have as many great fictional characters, but they haven’t made it to America yet, and/or haven’t been translated into English.

Following are a few examples of my favorites. Please add more if you have any favorites!

Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson–I have been a fan for over 50 years, since 6th grade!!! LOVE the Holmes/Watson canon!

James Bond–fan since high school!

The Avengers–John Steed, Kathy Gale, Emma Peel, Tara King! An amazing series, and the episodes are great stories to this day.

Dr Who!!! My husband and I started watching this in college back in the 70s–and we still love it!

Harry Potter–not a fan, but my husband and daughter are super fans!

The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings–not a fan, my husband is is a super duper fan!

The Chronicles of Narnia world–definitely a fan!

King Arthur–or was this real? Not sure, but there have certainly been a large number of fictional works about him and all his knights and ladies.

the Dickens characters, especially the characters in A Christmas Carol, and of course, Oliver Twist! Mr. Scrooge and Bob Cratchit and the ghosts have been made into so many movies and plays!

Mary Poppins–we saw the new movie last night and loved it. Loved the old one, too!

Winnie the Pooh!

Robin Hood and and his gang! (He wasn’t real, was he? I think he’s fiction.)

all of William Shakespeare’s characters! some were based on real people, but characters like Romeo and Juliet were created by the Bard!

Frankenstein (Mary Shelley was English!)

Dorian Gray (Oscar Wilde)

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Robert Louis Stevenson)–one of my favorites

Dracula!!! Bram Stoker, an English author, wrote this, and before him, several other English authors created other fictional vampires.

Dr. Dolittle (Hugh Lofting, a British author)

so who have I missed?
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Not American, but wanted to put a bit of balance in the mix here.

I agree that Mark Twain is brilliant, as are John Steinbeck, and F Scott Fitzgerald. Isaac Asimov wrote great sci-fi and detective stories.

Fantastic comedy writing in early seasons of The Simpsons, good sci fi in Star Trek.

Tennessee Williams - pretty much every character in A Streetcar Named Desire. Arthur Miller - same goes for The Crucible.

Edgar Allan Poe - need I say more!
 
Just to point out Paddington is Peruvian although written by a British author.
 
I’d say Charles Ryder, Sebastian Marchmain-Flyte, and the whole cast of other memorable characters in Brideshead Revisited.
 
Tis_Bearself said:
For example, there are a bunch of comical books from Italy about a priest named Don Camillo who feuds with the communist mayor of his town and usually gets the best of him.
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The Don Camillo stories by Giovanni Guareschi have been translated into more languages, and have sold more copies worldwide, than the works of any other Italian author apart from Dante.
 
George Smiley in John le Carré’s spy thrillers

Mowgli and other characters in the Jungle Books, particularly Kaa and Shere Khan.

Many of the characters in the Alice books, such as the Queen of Hearts, Humpty Dumpty, the Cheshire Cat, the Mad Hatter, the White Knght, the Walrus and the Carpenter, Tweedledum and Tweedledee …
 
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It seems like the place one normally finds them nowadays is church rummage sales. At least that’s where I picked up a couple. They must have been bought by a lot of elderly Catholics backintheday.
 
LilyM said:
F Scott Fitzgerald
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F Scott’s characters were basically him and his wife, repeated over and over, until he got to his last unfinished novel where the characters were him and his new girlfriend because the wife was in the mental hospital. I enjoyed some of his books anyway, but when it came to characters, the man showed a singular lack of imagination.
 
Paddington is a Peruvian immigrant to the UK.

He has since been integrated to British society.
 
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