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The Thursday Next Novels
by Jasper Fforde

• Overview • The Eyre Affair • Lost in a Good Book • The Well of Lost Plots • Something Rotten • Further Exploration •
Overview

Thursday Next is a Special Operations Literature Detective who lives in Swindon in an alternate version of 1985 in which Great Britain is still fighting the Crimean War and in which literature is taken so seriously that people riot over who really wrote the plays of Shakespeare.

All of the books feature Thursday interacting with characters from literature; all of the books are filled with puns and literary allusions.

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The Eyre Affair
Published 2002
Preview: In an alternate version of 1985, Thursday Next, a Special Operations Literature Detective, pursues master criminal Acheron Hades, who has kidnapped Thursday's uncle Mycroft, the inventor of a Prose Portal that allows fictional characters to pass into reality and vice versa.

Aided by her time-traveling father and the Edward Rochester character from Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, Thursday attempts to bring Hades to justice while pursuing peace in the Crimean Warand attempting to mend her own love life.
Navigation Guide
Identify the literary allusions. How do they enhance the story?
What happens in Chapter 13? Why?
Is enjoyment of the story dependent on the reader having a background knowledge of Elizabethan and Victorian literature? Explain.
How does the story handle the time travel paradox?
How does the subplot regarding the Crimean War contribute to the story?
What does the Goliath Group represent?
Compare Thursday's relationship to Landon to Rochester's relationship to Jane Eyre.
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Lost in a Good Book
Published 2002
Preview: Thursday Next must travel to the Great Hall of Jurisfiction to apprentice with Miss Havisham from Great Expectations by Charles Dickens and infiltrate Edgar Allan Poe's poem "The Raven" to release the villainous Jack Schitt in order to exchange him for her husband Landon who has been eradicated from the time stream.
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The Well of Lost Plots
Published 2003
Preview: Thursday, now pregnant, has taken advantage of the Character Exchange Program to live within the pages of a detective novel while she tries to remember her husband Landon, works toward becoming a full-fledged Jurisfiction agent, and tries to solve the murders of several fictional characters, most notably that of Miss Havisham from Great Expectations.
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Something Rotten
Published 2004
Preview: Thursday gives up her position as the Bellman of Jurisfiction in order to return to her home town of Swindon with her baby Friday. Accompanied by Shakespeare's character Hamlet, she attempts to restore her eradicated husband Landon to the timeline while at the same time thwarting the fictional character Yorrick Kaine's plot for world domination by coaching the Swindon croquet team to win the Super Hoop.
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Further Exploration
Saturn bulletInfoMarks (About InfoMarks)
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  • The Goliath Corporation, the official web site of the Goliath Corporation featured in the Thursday Next novels
  • SpecOps, a site focusing on Fforde's fictional Special Operations Network
  • Swindon, containing photos of the city of Swindon as it appears in the Thursday Next novels
  • Thursday Next, a site devoted to Thursday Next
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