Thursday Next

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Thursday Next is the main protagonist in a series of comic fantasy novels by the British author Jasper Fforde. She was first introduced in Fforde's first published novel, The Eyre Affair, released on July 19, 2001 by Hodder & Stoughton. As of 2007, the series comprises five books, in two series.[1] The first series is made up of the novels The Eyre Affair, Lost in a Good Book, The Well of Lost Plots and Something Rotten, and continues with First Among Sequels, released in the UK on July 5, 2007.

Contents

[edit] Background

Thursday is the daughter of Wednesday Next and Colonel Next (whose first name is never revealed), a former agent with Special Operations Network department 12 (SO-12), the Chronoguard. She has two brothers, Anton and Joffy. Anton, however was killed in the Crimean war, a war against Russia for a piece of land.

In her parallel universe, England is a republic, and George Formby was its first president, elected after the success of Operation Sealion (the mooted Nazi invasion of Great Britain), occupation and liberation. There is no United Kingdom, and Wales is the independent "Socialist Republic of Wales". The Crimean War is still being waged in 1985, Russia still has a Tsar, and the Whig Party still exists in the House of Commons.

Genetic engineering is far more advanced than in our own timeline, and so Thursday has a pet dodo, Pickwick. Re-engineered mammoths can cause damage to local gardens if in their path, and there is a Neanderthal rights movement, given the resurrection of this kindred branch of human evolution.

In the world of Thursday Next, literature is a much more popular medium than in our world, and Thursday is a member of SO-27, the Literary Detectives or LiteraTecs. Her work is centred on Swindon, where she, her husband, infant and mother live, and where LiteraTech is headquartered.

[edit] Biography

Thursday is in her mid-thirties at the start of the first book, and, by the end of it, had married Landen Parke-Laine. Thursday juggles her work in Swindon and the world of fiction, battling the machinations of the insidious Goliath Corporation, members of the Hades family and other evils at every turn.

Her biographer, "Millon de Floss", reveals more about her life at the beginnings of chapters in The Eyre Affair, Lost in a Good Book, The Well of Lost Plots and Something Rotten.

Her father Colonel Next is a rogue member of the ChronoGuard (SpecOps 12), a temporal policing agency, and does not officially exist, having been eradicated by his former bosses (using the simple but effective method of a timely knock on the door just before his conception; despite this, his children and grandchild still exist, likely due to Thursday's son Friday Next being the eventual head of the ChronoGuard). He does, however, remain at large throughout the time-space continuum, and still frequently finds time to visit Thursday, usually by stopping time around her so they can talk without his being arrested by the ChronoGuard. Colonel Next's first name is unknown to everybody but him, a consequence of his eradication. Thursday has two brothers, Anton, who died in the Crimean War, and Joffy, who is a minister for the Global Standard Deity (GSD).

Thursday also has a pet dodo called Pickwick. Although dodos had been extinct for some time, in Fforde's fictional universe they have been reintroduced through cloning, a popular hobby. Pickwick was 12 in 1985, when The Eyre Affair is set, and has some unusual characteristics, including missing wings. She is a version 1.2 Dodo, and the DNA sequencing wasn't complete until the release of 1.7. Although initially Thursday Next believed Pickwick to be male, she later turned out to be female when she laid an egg. Her noise is represented as "plock plock" in the books.

Around Thursday Next a fictional world has been created, reflected in several websites of the fictional organisations.

The fifth Thursday Next novel was published in July 2007 entitled First Among Sequels (despite an announcement in The Fourth Bear, which listed its title as The War of the Words.[1])

[edit] References

  1. ^ Special features for First Among Sequels – note that a code word (from the novel) is required to access this page.

[edit] External links

v • d • e
Novels by Jasper Fforde
Thursday Next series
Nursery Crimes series

The Big Over Easy · The Fourth Bear · The Last Great Tortoise Race (future)