Characters in the Thursday Next Series
Encyclopedia
The Thursday Next
series by Jasper Fforde
currently consists of the novels The Eyre Affair
, Lost in a Good Book
, The Well of Lost Plots
, Something Rotten
, First Among Sequels and One of Our Thursdays Is Missing
.
, the LiteraTecs, and is therefore Thursday's immediate superior.
, the LiteraTecs, assigned to the Swindon branch, and Thursday's partner after her transfer. In his thirties and with a slightly fussy, nervous edge to him, Bowden is intelligent and, at times, quite sly and cunning. He was responsible for thwarting the plans of Jack Schitt and the Goliath Corporation when he substituted a copy of Edgar Allan Poe
's poem "The Raven
" in place of the weapons manual that Schitt thought he was accessing. He shares his name with the braking cable on bicycles
. Another character is called Sturmey Archer, also a manufacturer of bicycle gears.
, or The Chandrian). He has shown an immunity to the effects of most weapons, his only confirmed vulnerability being to silver. Said to have the ability to "lie in thought, word, action and appearance" he also possesses formidable powers of deception, including the ability to assume the shape of others and hypnotic persuasive abilities on the "weaker minded" (he is unable to hypnotise Thursday). Another ability that possibly follows in this vein is his ability to pass through glass barriers by making the glass soft and pliable through heated touch; after he withdraws his hand the glass reverts to its original state, the only sign of his trespass being the slightly mottled surface of the glass where his hand passed through (show when Thursday examines the empty Chuzzlewit glass security casing). He appears to possess great strength, at one point easily smashing his way through a wall, although inertia still has an effect on him. Time does not seem to have a proper hold on him either, as when it is stopped around him by Colonel Next, he remains unaffected (this might possibly be why he does not seem to age). He is either very good at guessing or possesses some form of telepathy as he can figure out the personality faults and mental weaknesses of a person within moments.
Hades appears as the principal villain of The Eyre Affair. He kidnaps Mycroft Next and steals his Prose Portal, using it to enter stolen original manuscripts of such classic tales as Martin Chuzzlewit
and Jane Eyre
, with the aim of extracting characters from them and holding them to ransom. When Thursday rescued the extracted Jane Eyre, Hades escaped into the book, pursued by Thursday. Ultimately, they confronted each other in Thornfield Hall
, where Thursday was finally able to eliminate her opponent once and for all.
Acheron is the eldest child of the Hades Family, which is apparently evil as a whole (only one member is mentioned as not really being evil, Lethe, the apparent "white sheep" of the family; another brother, Styx Hades, is shown to be more of a nuisance than really evil, committing pranks and not possessing any actual powers). It is also implied that they have been evil for generations; as Acheron's sister Aornis puts it, "No member of the Hades family has been captured alive for eighty-eight generations."
Hades has made the occasional appearance in the later books, showing up within Thursday's memories.
in Swindon, including the Literary Detectives to whom Thursday transfers. He is perpetually concerned with the budget and seemingly nothing else. He allows Jack Schitt to have his way at first and seemingly faces up poorly to higher authority, but in Something Rotten he invents an elaborate cover story for Thursday after her return. He is often practising his putting in his office and coaxes Thursday to join him for a round of golf; she accepts out of gratitude for his alibi. Hicks has several grown children and by Something Rotten is planning to retire shortly. The name is an allusion to Braxton Hicks contractions near the end of pregnancy.
. After her husband's retirement, the couple moved into Thornfield Hall
within the novel Jane Eyre
, where they manage the house, carefully avoiding any appearances in the narrative.
and died there during a disastrous battle which occurred after he accidentally sent his unit off in the wrong direction (this mimics the classical "Charge of the Light Brigade"; Anton directs the Light Armoured Brigade into the teeth of the Russian artilery). After much agonising over whether to tell the truth, Landen finally gave evidence to the inquest about Anton's error, which drove a wedge between him and Thursday, until the two reconciled during the events of The Eyre Afair.
-14.
series of books, where he occasionally interfered with the narrative, appearing as Holmes' brother
. By the time of Something Rotten
he and Polly had returned safely to the real world, having used the memory erasure device to ensure that they were of no use to Goliath.
poem I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud
by Acheron Hades during the events of The Eyre Affair. Enjoys tormenting door-to-door salesmen along with Thursday's mother.
(and claims to still do so on occasion), but has now become something of a homebody, and is generally found there throughout the novels. She loves her husband, despite his eradication, but has occasional suspicions about his fidelity, particularly regarding his dealings with Lady Emma Hamilton
. She herself is not immune to other men, it transpires, as she develops an apparent interest in Otto Bismarck
when he stays with her for a few days. On the other hand, having no official husband, she is believed by most to have conceived three children outside of wedlock, something that affects her social life.
(still raging in Fforde's alternate 1985), during which he came into contact with Thursday, with whom he fell in love, and her brother Anton, who became his best friend. During the disastrous battle which became known as the "Charge of the Light-Armoured Brigade
", Anton was killed and Landen lost a leg. During the subsequent inquest, Landen, after much agonizing, admitted that Anton had made an error that had led to the destruction of their unit. As a result, Thursday left him and refused to speak to him for ten years. They came back into contact during the events of The Eyre Affair, during which Thursday was finally able to forgive Landen and agreed to marry him. Despite his missing leg, he is relied upon in dangerous situations.
During the events of Lost in a Good Book, Landen is eradicated from history by a rogue member of the Chronoguard, acting on behalf of the Goliath Corporation, who wish to blackmail Thursday into returning their operative Jack Schitt. He then appears only in Thursday's memories until reactualised during Something Rotten.
His name is one of Fforde's trademark puns: in the British edition of the board game Monopoly
, Park Lane
is the second-to-last street on the board and consequently one of the most expensive. As additions to this pun, Landen's late father is named "Billden Parke-Laine" and his mother is named "Houson Parke-Laine".
, brought to life by genetic engineering. Originally she was believed to be male, but revealed to be female during the events of Lost in a Good Book, when she lays an egg. This ultimately hatches, producing her son, Alan. The name is a reference to Dickens's Pickwick Papers
.
, Schitt used the Prose Portal to enter what he thought was the manual for the plasma rifle that he wanted to retrieve, only to discover that Bowden Cable had slipped a copy of "The Raven
" by Edgar Allan Poe
inside the manual's dust cover instead. The Portal closed behind him, trapping him there.
He was ultimately retrieved by Thursday during the events of Lost in a Good Book, after Goliath arranged to have her husband Landen eradicated from history by the Chronoguard
in order to blackmail her. She cooperated, only to find herself double-crossed. Schitt, however, never returned to his original position in the corporation; when next seen, during the events of Something Rotten, he has been demoted to a far lesser role within Goliath and makes only a brief appearance.
and is the sole agent for that department assigned to the Reading area. He deals with undead paranormals and the capturing of Supreme Evil Beings, and occasionally enlists Thursday Next to assist with his work in exchange for money. Later in the series, he marries a woman named Cindy, who he believes to be a librarian, but is in fact an assassin. "Stoker" is a reference to Bram Stoker
, author of Dracula
; It may also be a reference to the shape of the wooden stakes that he uses in his line of work, or to the famous British vampire William the Bloody.
Spike is almost on his own against the forces of darkness, yet is arguably the cheeriest person seen in the books: he is jocular, easy-going and is rarely serious or distressed in his work. He loses his cool only rarely; and although he once, seemingly in a fit of depression, considered the possibility of self-sacrifice/suicide
, admitting that "battling the undead was never a bowl of cherries
," he was in fact trying to trick both Thursday and a Supreme Evil Being. In Something Rotten he offers to take Thursday's place in the afterworld when she is about to die, now knowing that his wife is an assassin, but Thursday persuades him to stay for the sake of their daughter Betty. Ultimately, his wife gives her life to save Thursday. He is described as a tall, muscular man with blond dreadlocks and sunglasses. It was once hinted that he suffers from either lycanthropy
or vampirism
and requires regular "medication"; without it he will sometimes lose control of himself and exhibit wolflike behavior, such as eating live mice.
. He urges the PROs to "be careful out there", quoting the chief from Hill Street Blues
.
is now technically referred to as the Unitary Authority
of Warrington
Cat, but still generally known by his original appellation. He serves as an über-librarian to the Grand Library, as well as a high-ranking JurisFiction official. His work is especially significant in Something Rotten, where after years of searching he finds Yorrick Kaine's origin—a self-published novel not even in the Library—and engages Kaine in a Merlin
-versus-Madame Mim-esque battle of summoning literary warriors, eventually calling upon the Blue Fairy
from Pinocchio
to turn Kaine into a real person.
help Thursday foil Harris Tweed and his cohorts, and Potternews is finally granted an Internal Plot Readjustment to allow Vernham and his lover to marry happily.
. She spends the whole of Lost in a Good Book persistently trying to get Thursday to do press interviews regarding the alterations made to the storyline of Jane Eyre
during the events of The Eyre Affair.
, a concept of science. The general law of entropy, as presented in the book, states that reactions can only become more chaotic; a plate can fall to the ground and shatter, but it cannot reassemble. Aornis lowers entropy, causing extremely large-scale and bizarre coincidences to occur. She held the world to ransom in Lost, giving Thursday the ultimatum that she would stop her plan if Thursday takes her own life. With her plan thwarted at the last minute by the intervention of Colonel Next, Aornis escaped. In First Among Sequels, she is seen imprisoned by the Chronoguard, in a time-loop inside the T.K. Maxx
department store.
A mental copy of Aornis, embedded in Thursday's memories, made several appearances during the events of The Well of Lost Plots, often interacting with other 'personas' as recalled by Next. This copy was capable of altering Thursday's memories to suit her own purposes, but was finally defeated when she summoned Thursday's worst memory, which turned out to be a childhood nightmare. The Aornis copy was unable to control it and it destroyed her, and Thursday was left with the reassurance that defeating the real Aornis would now be easy.
Thursday claims that Aornis's name is derived from the fact that the Acheron
, Lethe
, Cocytus
, Phlegethon
, and Aornis rivers are all tributaries to the river Styx
. However, in canonical descriptions of the underworld, there is no river by the name Aornis, nor are the other rivers tributary to the Styx- however they do all flow through the Greek Underworld and separate its different regions.
is a member of the JurisFiction originating in the novel Great Expectations
by Charles Dickens
. She was assigned as Thursday Next's mentor when the younger woman first joined JurisFiction and tutored her through her examinations to become a fully fledged agent. A highly respected member of JurisFiction and one of their best operatives, her hobbies included driving powerful cars at terrifyingly high speeds. This hobby was eventually used against her during the events of The Well of Lost Plots, when a car she was driving was sabotaged, causing her to crash. Badly burned, she returned to her novel, where she and Pip staged her death within the novel. She is replaced by a generic understudy, which is understood by all to be 'not the same'.
By the events of Something Rotten, Kaine had advanced to the office of Chancellor, making him the second most powerful man in the land. He was using Mycroft Next's invention, the Ovinator, to manipulate Parliament into doing what he wanted. During the events of that novel, where he was made real and ultimately lost the Ovinator, he was removed from power. First Among Sequels reveals he has been arrested and imprisoned.
Granny's identity comes into question later on when Thursday realizes that both her grandmothers are long dead and she's only known Granny Next for about three years. Finally when Thursday is sentenced for her Jane Eyre fiction infraction—twenty years in blue gingham and having to read the ten most boring classics before she can die—she realizes that Granny is herself seventy years in the future. As friends and yet-unborn family members gather, Thursday reads the last paragraph of The Faerie Queen to Granny, who dies peacefully.
Granny's long life includes many interesting jobs, such as working in many different divisions of SpecOps
, spending twenty-four hours as a man and ruling as God Emperor of the Universe.
Perkins headed up the Grammasite Research facility, located in a land appropriated from an unpublished fantasy novel (The Sword of the Zenobians), which is populated by many fictional creatures who were unable to live safely within their own novels. He was slain when the Minotaur, held captive within the fantasy, was deliberately released to kill him.
Snell worked as the lawyer for JurisFiction. He is the first to contact Thursday by Footnoterphone in Lost in a Good Book, and as head of the JurisFiction legal team defends her at her first hearing in Franz Kafka
's The Trial
. When contact was lost with Perkins, he, accompanied by Thursday Next, Miss Havisham and Commander Bradshaw, entered the research facility to investigate. When a misspelling vyrus was released within Perkin's laboratory, Snell stayed behind to attempt to deal with it. He died from his injuries shortly afterwards.
Schitt-Hawse reappeared briefly in Something Rotten, when Thursday visited the CEO of the Goliath Corporation during a board meeting.
He is almost invariably accompanied by his henchmen, Mr. Chalk and Mr. Cheese, although by the time of Something Rotten Cheese has been reassigned to work at a Goliath-owned café.
and head of the Swindon branch of SpecOps
-13. He helped Thursday out during the events of Lost in a Good Book when she has a run-in, engineered by Aornis Hades, with another Neanderthal. He reappears during Something Rotten, when he accompanies her to the old Goliath laboratory facilities in the hope of finding information that would allow his race to breed successfully, something that was left out when their race was brought back to life through genetic engineering. In return for Thursday's assistance, Stiggins helps her win a critical croquet
game by providing a number of Neanderthal players to fill gaps on the team. His name is a reference to Stig of the Dump
.
.
, as it is summoned by Thursday through an emergency glass box located inside her standard issue equipment. It is unclear of the Great Panjandrum's true nature, and it appearance is based on the appearance of whoever views it; for example, Thursday sees it as a woman in her mid-thirties, like herself while a noted Jurisfiction sculptor perceived the entity as a fellow stonemason.
from Greek mythology
.
is the main character in the unpublished novel Caversham Heights where Thursday stays as part of the Character Exchange Program during the events of The Well of Lost Plots. He is also the protagonist in his own series of books written by Fforde.
is an active JurisFiction agent and their washerwoman. She trains Emperor Zhark and advocates for the appearances of hedgehogs in other works such as mentions in Shakespeare's
plays. After Thursday's retirement she helps to run JurisFiction and visits Thursday asking for help.
. Often punished for overdoing it, such as when he invades a Western with his armies to save Thursday, accidentally killing the main character. When he learns that his author, Handley Paige, is planning to kill him off, he manages to track him down and convince him otherwise.
-33. He has something of a talent for spotting rising stars, having started stalking the legendary actress Lola Vavoom when she was just a bit part player. He is now a Grade 1 stalker, allowed to stalk the very highest level of celebrity, but has, instead, chosen to become Thursday's officially-licenced stalker, feeling that she, while not at the highest level as yet, is destined for great things. Having published his autobiography A Stalk on the Wild Side, Millon has attained a not-inconsiderable level of celebrity himself and has his own stalker, Adam Gnusense (who, as an experienced stalker himself, having risen to Grade 3, has recently acquired his own stalker, who he describes as being a Grade 34 loser after catching him rummaging through his dustbins).
Millon is intelligent, polite and has considerable knowledge of conspiracy theories, a resource that Thursday draws upon when trying to locate a clone of William Shakespeare
. He accompanied her to Area 21, an area in mid-Wales
where the Goliath Corporation had their laboratories, to help out. As this was technically outside the remit of his stalker activities, he asked, in return, if he could be her official biographer, something to which Thursday readily agreed.
Many of the excerpts from fictional works found at the beginning of each chapter have ostensibly been written by de Floss. His name is an allusion to the novel The Mill on the Floss
by George Eliot
, which Thursday and Miss Havisham visit on assignment in The Well of Lost Plots.
Goliath V is the great-great-grandson of the founder of the Goliath Corporation and its current CEO. He meets with Thursday personally to apologize to her, but in reality he used Goliath's ovinator to convince her to forgive them. His fate after Goliath's loss to the Toast Marketing Board is unknown.
play
. He accompanied Thursday on her return to the real world at the beginning of Something Rotten, as he was concerned at the perception in the Outland that he was an indecisive character. During his time there, he became romantically involved with Lady Emma Hamilton
and found a new decisiveness within himself, one that he originally planned to take back into his play and rewrite it from within, portraying himself as a much more dynamic character. Ultimately, however, he came to realise that the flaws in his character are what make his play memorable and much loved, and elected to leave his play as it was. He chose to focus his energies elsewhere, joining JurisFiction as their agent for the Shakespearean and Marlowe
plays.
Hamlet's Danish origins are a point of contention during Kaine's anti-Denmark campaign, but he bluffs Kaine into thinking he has gathered an army of Daphne Farquitt fans and the Copenhagen
-born author herself to save Thursday at a critical moment. As a parting gift, Thursday gave Hamlet Alan the dodo, the tearaway son of her own dodo, Pickwick, to take with him, as Hamlet had proven to be the only one able to get Alan to behave himself.
at the age of nine.
, due to his upbringing in the Bookworld. He is close to Melanie Bradshaw, who frequently baby-sat for him.
In First Among Sequels, Friday is apparently a lazy, slovenly adolescent whom Thursday calls a "tedious teenage cliché: grunting, sighing at any request, and staying in bed until past midday." In actuality, this indolence is a cover for his secret agenda to overthrow Chronoguard, which his future self has found to be corrupt.
, created in a secret long-abandoned project by Goliath. He is rescued by Thursday, Bowden, Stig, and Spike, and is recruited by JurisFiction to rewrite Hamlet and The Merry Wives of Windsor, which merged in Hamlet's absence. Shgakespeafe appears to be just as talented a writer as Shakespeare; indeed, all of his lines in Something Rotten are quotes from Shakespeare's plays. He is athetically skilled, having lived much of his life avoiding cloned creatures.
team win the Superhoop, fulfilling the seventh and final Revealment, Thursday's father explains that Zvlkx had travelled through time himself, and that his Revealments were in fact bets now worth billions of pounds. Because the bookie's was owned ultimately by Goliath, the Toast Marketing Board took control of the majority of the multinational and ended their reign over England.
.
. Thursday takes her on as a cadet for training for Jurisfiction, but is consistently frustrated by Thursday5's incompetence and excessive pacifism. Like Thursday1-4, Thursday5 also looks identical to the real Thursday, despite a supposed age difference.
Thursday Next
Thursday Next is the main protagonist in a series of comic fantasy, alternate history 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. , the series comprises six books, in two...
series by Jasper Fforde
Jasper Fforde
Jasper Fforde is a British novelist. Fforde's first novel, The Eyre Affair, was published in 2001. Fforde is mainly known for his Thursday Next novels, although he has written several books in the loosely connected Nursery Crime series and begun two more independent series: The Last Dragonslayer...
currently consists of the novels The Eyre Affair
The Eyre Affair
The Eyre Affair is the first published novel by English author Jasper Fforde, released by Hodder and Stoughton in 2001. It takes place in alternative 1985, where literary detective Thursday Next pursues a master criminal through the world of Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre.-Plot summary:In a parallel...
, Lost in a Good Book
Lost in a Good Book
Lost in a Good Book is an alternate history, fantasy novel by Jasper Fforde. It won the IMBA 2004 Dilys Award.-Plot introduction:It is the second book by Jasper Fforde and the sequel to the adventures of literary detective Thursday Next in The Eyre Affair...
, The Well of Lost Plots
The Well of Lost Plots
The Well of Lost Plots is the third book by Jasper Fforde and the continuation of the adventures of literary detective Thursday Next from The Eyre Affair and Lost in a Good Book...
, Something Rotten
Something Rotten
Something Rotten is the fourthbook in the Thursday Next series by Jasper Fforde. It continues the story some two years after the point where The Well of Lost Plots leaves off.-Plot introduction:...
, First Among Sequels and One of Our Thursdays Is Missing
One of our Thursdays is Missing
One of our Thursdays is Missing is the sixth Thursday Next book, and was published in February 2011 in the UK and was published in March in the United States...
.
Victor Analogy
In his seventies, Analogy is the head of the Swindon branch of SO-27SpecOps
SpecOps is a fictional overarching British governmental force in Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next series of novels. It was established in 1928 to handle policing duties "too unusual or too specialized" to be handled by the regular police. The force and divisions are similar in name to the real world...
, the LiteraTecs, and is therefore Thursday's immediate superior.
Bowden Cable
An operative for SO-27SpecOps
SpecOps is a fictional overarching British governmental force in Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next series of novels. It was established in 1928 to handle policing duties "too unusual or too specialized" to be handled by the regular police. The force and divisions are similar in name to the real world...
, the LiteraTecs, assigned to the Swindon branch, and Thursday's partner after her transfer. In his thirties and with a slightly fussy, nervous edge to him, Bowden is intelligent and, at times, quite sly and cunning. He was responsible for thwarting the plans of Jack Schitt and the Goliath Corporation when he substituted a copy of Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe was an American author, poet, editor and literary critic, considered part of the American Romantic Movement. Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story and is considered the inventor of the detective...
's poem "The Raven
The Raven
"The Raven" is a narrative poem by American writer Edgar Allan Poe, first published in January 1845. It is often noted for its musicality, stylized language, and supernatural atmosphere. It tells of a talking raven's mysterious visit to a distraught lover, tracing the man's slow descent into madness...
" in place of the weapons manual that Schitt thought he was accessing. He shares his name with the braking cable on bicycles
Bowden cable
A Bowden cable is a type of flexible cable used to transmit mechanical force or energy by the movement of an inner cable relative to a hollow outer cable housing...
. Another character is called Sturmey Archer, also a manufacturer of bicycle gears.
Acheron Hades
Hugely intelligent and equally immoral (believes in doing what is morally evil, as opposed to amorality, which would mean not believing in a moral good or evil), Acheron Hades started out as a lecturer in English, teaching, among others, Thursday Next, before he turned to a life of crime. Believed by some to be only half-human, the other half being allegedly demonic or vampiric in nature (he casts no shadow), Acheron possesses a number of mysterious powers (as, indeed, do most of his siblings). He cannot be photographed or recorded in any way, and has shown the ability to know when his name is uttered within a considerable distance (a radius of 1000 yards, and possible further), hence his name is not often spoken aloud (compare Lord VoldemortLord Voldemort
Lord Voldemort is the main antagonist of the Harry Potter series written by British author J. K. Rowling. Voldemort first appeared in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, which was released in 1997...
, or The Chandrian). He has shown an immunity to the effects of most weapons, his only confirmed vulnerability being to silver. Said to have the ability to "lie in thought, word, action and appearance" he also possesses formidable powers of deception, including the ability to assume the shape of others and hypnotic persuasive abilities on the "weaker minded" (he is unable to hypnotise Thursday). Another ability that possibly follows in this vein is his ability to pass through glass barriers by making the glass soft and pliable through heated touch; after he withdraws his hand the glass reverts to its original state, the only sign of his trespass being the slightly mottled surface of the glass where his hand passed through (show when Thursday examines the empty Chuzzlewit glass security casing). He appears to possess great strength, at one point easily smashing his way through a wall, although inertia still has an effect on him. Time does not seem to have a proper hold on him either, as when it is stopped around him by Colonel Next, he remains unaffected (this might possibly be why he does not seem to age). He is either very good at guessing or possesses some form of telepathy as he can figure out the personality faults and mental weaknesses of a person within moments.
Hades appears as the principal villain of The Eyre Affair. He kidnaps Mycroft Next and steals his Prose Portal, using it to enter stolen original manuscripts of such classic tales as Martin Chuzzlewit
Martin Chuzzlewit
The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit is a novel by Charles Dickens, considered the last of his picaresque novels. It was originally serialized between 1843-1844. Dickens himself proclaimed Martin Chuzzlewit to be his best work, but it was one of his least popular novels...
and Jane Eyre
Jane Eyre
Jane Eyre is a novel by English writer Charlotte Brontë. It was published in London, England, in 1847 by Smith, Elder & Co. with the title Jane Eyre. An Autobiography under the pen name "Currer Bell." The first American edition was released the following year by Harper & Brothers of New York...
, with the aim of extracting characters from them and holding them to ransom. When Thursday rescued the extracted Jane Eyre, Hades escaped into the book, pursued by Thursday. Ultimately, they confronted each other in Thornfield Hall
Thornfield Hall
Thornfield Hall is the home of the male romantic lead, Edward Rochester, in the 1847 novel Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë. Thornfield Hall is also where a large part of the action takes place....
, where Thursday was finally able to eliminate her opponent once and for all.
Acheron is the eldest child of the Hades Family, which is apparently evil as a whole (only one member is mentioned as not really being evil, Lethe, the apparent "white sheep" of the family; another brother, Styx Hades, is shown to be more of a nuisance than really evil, committing pranks and not possessing any actual powers). It is also implied that they have been evil for generations; as Acheron's sister Aornis puts it, "No member of the Hades family has been captured alive for eighty-eight generations."
Hades has made the occasional appearance in the later books, showing up within Thursday's memories.
Braxton Hicks
Hicks is in charge of several divisions of SpecOpsSpecOps
SpecOps is a fictional overarching British governmental force in Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next series of novels. It was established in 1928 to handle policing duties "too unusual or too specialized" to be handled by the regular police. The force and divisions are similar in name to the real world...
in Swindon, including the Literary Detectives to whom Thursday transfers. He is perpetually concerned with the budget and seemingly nothing else. He allows Jack Schitt to have his way at first and seemingly faces up poorly to higher authority, but in Something Rotten he invents an elaborate cover story for Thursday after her return. He is often practising his putting in his office and coaxes Thursday to join him for a round of golf; she accepts out of gratitude for his alibi. Hicks has several grown children and by Something Rotten is planning to retire shortly. The name is an allusion to Braxton Hicks contractions near the end of pregnancy.
Mrs. Nakajima
A Japanese literary tourist, and a member of JurisFiction. She gives Thursday the tools to become a JurisFiction agent herself in Lost in a Good BookLost in a Good Book
Lost in a Good Book is an alternate history, fantasy novel by Jasper Fforde. It won the IMBA 2004 Dilys Award.-Plot introduction:It is the second book by Jasper Fforde and the sequel to the adventures of literary detective Thursday Next in The Eyre Affair...
. After her husband's retirement, the couple moved into Thornfield Hall
Thornfield Hall
Thornfield Hall is the home of the male romantic lead, Edward Rochester, in the 1847 novel Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë. Thornfield Hall is also where a large part of the action takes place....
within the novel Jane Eyre
Jane Eyre
Jane Eyre is a novel by English writer Charlotte Brontë. It was published in London, England, in 1847 by Smith, Elder & Co. with the title Jane Eyre. An Autobiography under the pen name "Currer Bell." The first American edition was released the following year by Harper & Brothers of New York...
, where they manage the house, carefully avoiding any appearances in the narrative.
Anton Next
Brother to Thursday and Joffy Next and best friend of Landen Parke-Laine. He fought in the Crimean WarCrimean War
The Crimean War was a conflict fought between the Russian Empire and an alliance of the French Empire, the British Empire, the Ottoman Empire, and the Kingdom of Sardinia. The war was part of a long-running contest between the major European powers for influence over territories of the declining...
and died there during a disastrous battle which occurred after he accidentally sent his unit off in the wrong direction (this mimics the classical "Charge of the Light Brigade"; Anton directs the Light Armoured Brigade into the teeth of the Russian artilery). After much agonising over whether to tell the truth, Landen finally gave evidence to the inquest about Anton's error, which drove a wedge between him and Thursday, until the two reconciled during the events of The Eyre Afair.
Colonel Next
Thursday's father and ex-member of SO-12, the ChronoGuard. Went rogue, leading the ChronoGuard to delete him from history by interrupting his conception; however, due to his skills at time manipulation, still exists and drops in on his family from time to time to assist or pass on advice. By the events of Something Rotten, he has rejoined the ChronoGuard, albeit in a reduced capacity. In the end of First Among Sequels, he's reactualised.Joffy Next
Brother of Thursday and Anton Next. He is a minister for the Global Standard Deity, which aims to represent all of the others equally and without prejudice, with the laudable aim of attempting to prevent religious conflict. Cheerful, frequently irreverent almost but (usually) not quite to the point of being irritating and laid-back, he nevertheless has an extremely caring nature and a great deal of wisdom, which serves him well in his chosen vocation. He generally calls Thursday 'Doofus' and used to slap her on the back of the head on a daily basis until she broke his nose to get him to stop, but the two are very close. As of Lost in a Good Book he is in a relationship with Miles Hawke, an operative with SpecOpsSpecOps
SpecOps is a fictional overarching British governmental force in Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next series of novels. It was established in 1928 to handle policing duties "too unusual or too specialized" to be handled by the regular police. The force and divisions are similar in name to the real world...
-14.
Mycroft Next
Thursday's uncle and husband of Polly. Mycroft is an inventor of strange and unusual devices of varying degrees of use. Some have proved to be important plot devices throughout the series, such as his Prose Portal, which allowed real-world individuals to enter books and the Ovinator, which encourages cooperation. Others, such as his device for erasing memories (which he has no recollection of ever inventing) serve purely as running gags. He has been hunted by the Goliath Corporation, who wished to use his Prose Portal to retrieve fictional weaponry from the Bookworld to sell in the real world. He retired into the Bookworld, living within the Sherlock HolmesSherlock Holmes
Sherlock Holmes is a fictional detective created by Scottish author and physician Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The fantastic London-based "consulting detective", Holmes is famous for his astute logical reasoning, his ability to take almost any disguise, and his use of forensic science skills to solve...
series of books, where he occasionally interfered with the narrative, appearing as Holmes' brother
Mycroft Holmes
Mycroft Holmes is a fictional character in the stories written by Arthur Conan Doyle. He is the elder brother of the famous detective Sherlock Holmes.- Profile :...
. By the time of Something Rotten
Something Rotten
Something Rotten is the fourthbook in the Thursday Next series by Jasper Fforde. It continues the story some two years after the point where The Well of Lost Plots leaves off.-Plot introduction:...
he and Polly had returned safely to the real world, having used the memory erasure device to ensure that they were of no use to Goliath.
Polly Next
A brilliant mathematician, Thursday's aunt, and wife of Mycroft. She generally serves as Mycroft's assistant, as she possesses far more common sense than her husband. She was temporarily held hostage within the William WordsworthWilliam Wordsworth
William Wordsworth was a major English Romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romantic Age in English literature with the 1798 joint publication Lyrical Ballads....
poem I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud
I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud
"I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud" is a poem by William Wordsworth.It was inspired by an April 15, 1802 event in which Wordsworth and his sister, Dorothy, came across a "long belt" of daffodils...
by Acheron Hades during the events of The Eyre Affair. Enjoys tormenting door-to-door salesmen along with Thursday's mother.
Wednesday Next
Mother to Thursday Next and her brothers. She used to work for SpecOps 3SpecOps
SpecOps is a fictional overarching British governmental force in Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next series of novels. It was established in 1928 to handle policing duties "too unusual or too specialized" to be handled by the regular police. The force and divisions are similar in name to the real world...
(and claims to still do so on occasion), but has now become something of a homebody, and is generally found there throughout the novels. She loves her husband, despite his eradication, but has occasional suspicions about his fidelity, particularly regarding his dealings with Lady Emma Hamilton
Emma, Lady Hamilton
Emma, Lady Hamilton is best remembered as the mistress of Lord Nelson and as the muse of George Romney. She was born Amy Lyon in Ness near Neston, Cheshire, England, the daughter of a blacksmith, Henry Lyon, who died when she was two months old...
. She herself is not immune to other men, it transpires, as she develops an apparent interest in Otto Bismarck
Otto von Bismarck
Otto Eduard Leopold, Prince of Bismarck, Duke of Lauenburg , simply known as Otto von Bismarck, was a Prussian-German statesman whose actions unified Germany, made it a major player in world affairs, and created a balance of power that kept Europe at peace after 1871.As Minister President of...
when he stays with her for a few days. On the other hand, having no official husband, she is believed by most to have conceived three children outside of wedlock, something that affects her social life.
Landen Parke-Laine
Thursday's husband, Landen is an award-winning novelist whose books include Bad Sofa, Memoirs of A Crimean Veteran and Once Were Scoundrels. He served as an officer in the Crimean WarCrimean War
The Crimean War was a conflict fought between the Russian Empire and an alliance of the French Empire, the British Empire, the Ottoman Empire, and the Kingdom of Sardinia. The war was part of a long-running contest between the major European powers for influence over territories of the declining...
(still raging in Fforde's alternate 1985), during which he came into contact with Thursday, with whom he fell in love, and her brother Anton, who became his best friend. During the disastrous battle which became known as the "Charge of the Light-Armoured Brigade
Charge of the Light Brigade
The Charge of the Light Brigade was a charge of British cavalry led by Lord Cardigan against Russian forces during the Battle of Balaclava on 25 October 1854 in the Crimean War. The charge was the result of a miscommunication in such a way that the brigade attempted a much more difficult objective...
", Anton was killed and Landen lost a leg. During the subsequent inquest, Landen, after much agonizing, admitted that Anton had made an error that had led to the destruction of their unit. As a result, Thursday left him and refused to speak to him for ten years. They came back into contact during the events of The Eyre Affair, during which Thursday was finally able to forgive Landen and agreed to marry him. Despite his missing leg, he is relied upon in dangerous situations.
During the events of Lost in a Good Book, Landen is eradicated from history by a rogue member of the Chronoguard, acting on behalf of the Goliath Corporation, who wish to blackmail Thursday into returning their operative Jack Schitt. He then appears only in Thursday's memories until reactualised during Something Rotten.
His name is one of Fforde's trademark puns: in the British edition of the board game Monopoly
Monopoly (game)
Marvin Gardens, the leading yellow property on the board shown, is actually a misspelling of the original location name, Marven Gardens. The misspelling was said to be introduced by Charles Todd and passed on when his home-made Monopoly board was copied by Charles Darrow and thence to Parker...
, Park Lane
Park Lane (road)
Park Lane is a major road in the City of Westminster, in Central London.-History:Originally a country lane running north-south along what is now the eastern boundary of Hyde Park, it became a fashionable residential address from the eighteenth century onwards, offering both views across Hyde Park...
is the second-to-last street on the board and consequently one of the most expensive. As additions to this pun, Landen's late father is named "Billden Parke-Laine" and his mother is named "Houson Parke-Laine".
Pickwick
Thursday's pet dodoDodo
The dodo was a flightless bird endemic to the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius. Related to pigeons and doves, it stood about a meter tall, weighing about , living on fruit, and nesting on the ground....
, brought to life by genetic engineering. Originally she was believed to be male, but revealed to be female during the events of Lost in a Good Book, when she lays an egg. This ultimately hatches, producing her son, Alan. The name is a reference to Dickens's Pickwick Papers
The Pickwick Papers
The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club is the first novel by Charles Dickens. After the publication, the widow of the illustrator Robert Seymour claimed that the idea for the novel was originally her husband's; however, in his preface to the 1867 edition, Dickens strenuously denied any...
.
Jack Schitt
Head of the Goliath Corporation's internal security service and their Advanced Weapons Division, and thus a man of great power. He showed great interest in Mycroft Next's Prose Portal, hoping to use it to retrieve fictional weaponry, having utterly failed to make the equivalent weapon work in the real world, to the extent that he was willing to work with the criminal Acheron Hades in order to gain access. Once Hades was defeated within Jane EyreJane Eyre
Jane Eyre is a novel by English writer Charlotte Brontë. It was published in London, England, in 1847 by Smith, Elder & Co. with the title Jane Eyre. An Autobiography under the pen name "Currer Bell." The first American edition was released the following year by Harper & Brothers of New York...
, Schitt used the Prose Portal to enter what he thought was the manual for the plasma rifle that he wanted to retrieve, only to discover that Bowden Cable had slipped a copy of "The Raven
The Raven
"The Raven" is a narrative poem by American writer Edgar Allan Poe, first published in January 1845. It is often noted for its musicality, stylized language, and supernatural atmosphere. It tells of a talking raven's mysterious visit to a distraught lover, tracing the man's slow descent into madness...
" by Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe was an American author, poet, editor and literary critic, considered part of the American Romantic Movement. Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story and is considered the inventor of the detective...
inside the manual's dust cover instead. The Portal closed behind him, trapping him there.
He was ultimately retrieved by Thursday during the events of Lost in a Good Book, after Goliath arranged to have her husband Landen eradicated from history by the Chronoguard
SpecOps
SpecOps is a fictional overarching British governmental force in Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next series of novels. It was established in 1928 to handle policing duties "too unusual or too specialized" to be handled by the regular police. The force and divisions are similar in name to the real world...
in order to blackmail her. She cooperated, only to find herself double-crossed. Schitt, however, never returned to his original position in the corporation; when next seen, during the events of Something Rotten, he has been demoted to a far lesser role within Goliath and makes only a brief appearance.
Filbert Snood
A member of SpecOps 12, the ChronoGuard, Filbert dated Thursday until he experienced a mishap in the timestream and was too embarrassed to tell her. Thursday runs into him again while both are working for SpecOps 5 in pursuit of Acheron Hades. When introduced to "Snood," Thursday assumes he is his father and doesn't discover his true identity until he is killed by Hades.Spike Stoker
Spike works for SO-17SpecOps
SpecOps is a fictional overarching British governmental force in Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next series of novels. It was established in 1928 to handle policing duties "too unusual or too specialized" to be handled by the regular police. The force and divisions are similar in name to the real world...
and is the sole agent for that department assigned to the Reading area. He deals with undead paranormals and the capturing of Supreme Evil Beings, and occasionally enlists Thursday Next to assist with his work in exchange for money. Later in the series, he marries a woman named Cindy, who he believes to be a librarian, but is in fact an assassin. "Stoker" is a reference to Bram Stoker
Bram Stoker
Abraham "Bram" Stoker was an Irish novelist and short story writer, best known today for his 1897 Gothic novel Dracula...
, author of Dracula
Dracula
Dracula is an 1897 novel by Irish author Bram Stoker.Famous for introducing the character of the vampire Count Dracula, the novel tells the story of Dracula's attempt to relocate from Transylvania to England, and the battle between Dracula and a small group of men and women led by Professor...
; It may also be a reference to the shape of the wooden stakes that he uses in his line of work, or to the famous British vampire William the Bloody.
Spike is almost on his own against the forces of darkness, yet is arguably the cheeriest person seen in the books: he is jocular, easy-going and is rarely serious or distressed in his work. He loses his cool only rarely; and although he once, seemingly in a fit of depression, considered the possibility of self-sacrifice/suicide
Suicide
Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Suicide is often committed out of despair or attributed to some underlying mental disorder, such as depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, alcoholism, or drug abuse...
, admitting that "battling the undead was never a bowl of cherries
Litotes
In rhetoric, litotes is a figure of speech in which understatement is employed for rhetorical effect when an idea is expressed by a denial of its opposite, principally via double negatives....
," he was in fact trying to trick both Thursday and a Supreme Evil Being. In Something Rotten he offers to take Thursday's place in the afterworld when she is about to die, now knowing that his wife is an assassin, but Thursday persuades him to stay for the sake of their daughter Betty. Ultimately, his wife gives her life to save Thursday. He is described as a tall, muscular man with blond dreadlocks and sunglasses. It was once hinted that he suffers from either lycanthropy
Lycanthropy
Lycanthropy is the professed ability or power of a human being to undergo transformation into a werewolf, or to gain wolf-like characteristics. The term comes from Greek Lykànthropos : λύκος, lykos + άνθρωπος, ànthrōpos...
or vampirism
Vampire
Vampires are mythological or folkloric beings who subsist by feeding on the life essence of living creatures, regardless of whether they are undead or a living person...
and requires regular "medication"; without it he will sometimes lose control of himself and exhibit wolflike behavior, such as eating live mice.
The Bellman
The head of JurisFiction. During the events of Lost in a Good Book and The Well of Lost Plots, this position is filled by an unnamed individual who is only ever referred to by his title. He retired after the events of those book; Thursday was then asked to assume the role, which she accepted, holding the position for around two years before resigning during the events of Something Rotten. The Bellman is hinted to be the lead character in Lewis Carroll's The Hunting of the SnarkThe Hunting of the Snark
The Hunting of the Snark is usually thought of as a nonsense poem written by Lewis Carroll in 1874, when he was 42 years old...
. He urges the PROs to "be careful out there", quoting the chief from Hill Street Blues
Hill Street Blues
Hill Street Blues is an American serial police drama that was first aired on NBC in 1981 and ran for 146 episodes on primetime into 1987. Chronicling the lives of the staff of a single police precinct in an unnamed American city, the show received critical acclaim and its production innovations ...
.
The Cheshire Cat
Due to boundary changes the Cheshire CatCheshire Cat
The Cheshire Cat is a fictional cat popularised by Lewis Carroll's depiction of it in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Known for his distinctive mischievous grin, the Cheshire Cat has had a notable impact on popular culture.-Origins:...
is now technically referred to as the Unitary Authority
Unitary authority
A unitary authority is a type of local authority that has a single tier and is responsible for all local government functions within its area or performs additional functions which elsewhere in the relevant country are usually performed by national government or a higher level of sub-national...
of Warrington
Warrington
Warrington is a town, borough and unitary authority area of Cheshire, England. It stands on the banks of the River Mersey, which is tidal to the west of the weir at Howley. It lies 16 miles east of Liverpool, 19 miles west of Manchester and 8 miles south of St Helens...
Cat, but still generally known by his original appellation. He serves as an über-librarian to the Grand Library, as well as a high-ranking JurisFiction official. His work is especially significant in Something Rotten, where after years of searching he finds Yorrick Kaine's origin—a self-published novel not even in the Library—and engages Kaine in a Merlin
Merlin
Merlin is a legendary figure best known as the wizard featured in the Arthurian legend. The standard depiction of the character first appears in Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae, written c. 1136, and is based on an amalgamation of previous historical and legendary figures...
-versus-Madame Mim-esque battle of summoning literary warriors, eventually calling upon the Blue Fairy
Blue Fairy
The Fairy With Turquoise Hair is a fictional character in Carlo Collodi's book The Adventures of Pinocchio. She repeatedly appears at critical moments in Pinocchio's wanderings to admonish the little wooden puppet to avoid bad or risky behavior...
from Pinocchio
Pinocchio
The Adventures of Pinocchio is a novel for children by Italian author Carlo Collodi, written in Florence. The first half was originally a serial between 1881 and 1883, and then later completed as a book for children in February 1883. It is about the mischievous adventures of Pinocchio , an...
to turn Kaine into a real person.
Vernham Deane
Resident cad within Daphne Farquitt's The Squire of High Potternews, Deane is an accomplished JurisFiction agent who in reality is nothing like his character in his novel. he is a potential target in The Well of Lost Plots along with Perkins and Havisham, but his disappearance makes him a suspect instead. He is revealed to have been hiding for his own safety with the serving girl he ravishes, with whom he is actually in love. They and QuasimodoQuasimodo
Quasimodo is a fictional character in the novel The Hunchback of Notre-Dame by Victor Hugo. Quasimodo was born with a hunchback and feared by the townspeople as a sort of monster but he finds sanctuary in an unlikely love that is fulfilled only in death. The role of Quasimodo has been played by...
help Thursday foil Harris Tweed and his cohorts, and Potternews is finally granted an Internal Plot Readjustment to allow Vernham and his lover to marry happily.
Daphne Farquitt
A reclusive septuagenarian author of trashy romances, Farquitt began writing in the 1930s and has little real variation in plot between her novels. Vernham Deane is one of her characters. As the author of the vanity-published At Long Last Lust, origin of Yorrick Kaine, Kaine starts a campaign against all things Danish in an attempt to destroy every remaining copy of his book (Farquitt having been born in Copenhagen) so he cannot be deleted from within. Hamlet claims to have brought her and tens of thousands of her fans to the Superhoop to stop Kaine's interference, but in reality it was only nine fans and Farquitt remains as elusive as ever.Cordelia Flakk
Cordelia is an attractive senior SpecOps agent who works in Public RelationsPublic relations
Public relations is the actions of a corporation, store, government, individual, etc., in promoting goodwill between itself and the public, the community, employees, customers, etc....
. She spends the whole of Lost in a Good Book persistently trying to get Thursday to do press interviews regarding the alterations made to the storyline of Jane Eyre
Jane Eyre
Jane Eyre is a novel by English writer Charlotte Brontë. It was published in London, England, in 1847 by Smith, Elder & Co. with the title Jane Eyre. An Autobiography under the pen name "Currer Bell." The first American edition was released the following year by Harper & Brothers of New York...
during the events of The Eyre Affair.
Aornis Hades
The younger sister of Acheron Hades, who appeared as a villain in Lost in a Good Book. Aornis Hades is a mnemonomorph, a person who can alter memories at will; she can also apparently alter entropyEntropy
Entropy is a thermodynamic property that can be used to determine the energy available for useful work in a thermodynamic process, such as in energy conversion devices, engines, or machines. Such devices can only be driven by convertible energy, and have a theoretical maximum efficiency when...
, a concept of science. The general law of entropy, as presented in the book, states that reactions can only become more chaotic; a plate can fall to the ground and shatter, but it cannot reassemble. Aornis lowers entropy, causing extremely large-scale and bizarre coincidences to occur. She held the world to ransom in Lost, giving Thursday the ultimatum that she would stop her plan if Thursday takes her own life. With her plan thwarted at the last minute by the intervention of Colonel Next, Aornis escaped. In First Among Sequels, she is seen imprisoned by the Chronoguard, in a time-loop inside the T.K. Maxx
T.K. Maxx
T.K. Maxx is a retailer with stores throughout the United Kingdom, Ireland, Germany and Poland. The company is part of the TJX Companies which also owns other 'off-price' retail chains such as T.J. Maxx and Marshalls in the United States and Winners in Canada...
department store.
A mental copy of Aornis, embedded in Thursday's memories, made several appearances during the events of The Well of Lost Plots, often interacting with other 'personas' as recalled by Next. This copy was capable of altering Thursday's memories to suit her own purposes, but was finally defeated when she summoned Thursday's worst memory, which turned out to be a childhood nightmare. The Aornis copy was unable to control it and it destroyed her, and Thursday was left with the reassurance that defeating the real Aornis would now be easy.
Thursday claims that Aornis's name is derived from the fact that the Acheron
Acheron
The Acheron is a river located in the Epirus region of northwest Greece. It flows into the Ionian Sea in Ammoudia, near Parga.-In mythology:...
, Lethe
Lethe
In Greek mythology, Lethe was one of the five rivers of Hades. Also known as the Ameles potamos , the Lethe flowed around the cave of Hypnos and through the Underworld, where all those who drank from it experienced complete forgetfulness...
, Cocytus
Cocytus
Cocytus or Kokytos, meaning "the river of wailing" , is a river in the underworld in Greek mythology. Cocytus flows into the river Acheron, across which dwells the underworld, the mythological abode of the dead. There are five rivers encircling Hades...
, Phlegethon
Phlegethon
In Greek mythology, the river Phlegethon or Pyriphlegethon was one of the five rivers in the infernal regions of the underworld, along with the rivers Styx, Lethe, Cocytus, and Acheron...
, and Aornis rivers are all tributaries to the river Styx
Styx (mythology)
The Styx is a river in Greek mythology that formed the boundary between Earth and the Underworld . It circles the Underworld nine times...
. However, in canonical descriptions of the underworld, there is no river by the name Aornis, nor are the other rivers tributary to the Styx- however they do all flow through the Greek Underworld and separate its different regions.
Miss Havisham
Miss HavishamMiss Havisham
Miss Havisham is a significant character in the Charles Dickens novel Great Expectations . She is a wealthy spinster, who lives in her ruined mansion with her adopted daughter, Estella, whom she has sent to France, while she herself is described as looking like "the witch of the place."Although she...
is a member of the JurisFiction originating in the novel Great Expectations
Great Expectations
Great Expectations is a novel by Charles Dickens. It was first published in serial form in the publication All the Year Round from 1 December 1860 to August 1861. It has been adapted for stage and screen over 250 times....
by Charles Dickens
Charles Dickens
Charles John Huffam Dickens was an English novelist, generally considered the greatest of the Victorian period. Dickens enjoyed a wider popularity and fame than had any previous author during his lifetime, and he remains popular, having been responsible for some of English literature's most iconic...
. She was assigned as Thursday Next's mentor when the younger woman first joined JurisFiction and tutored her through her examinations to become a fully fledged agent. A highly respected member of JurisFiction and one of their best operatives, her hobbies included driving powerful cars at terrifyingly high speeds. This hobby was eventually used against her during the events of The Well of Lost Plots, when a car she was driving was sabotaged, causing her to crash. Badly burned, she returned to her novel, where she and Pip staged her death within the novel. She is replaced by a generic understudy, which is understood by all to be 'not the same'.
Yorrick Kaine
Yorrick Kaine is a fictional character, originating in a highly limited self-published early novel by the author Daphne Farquitt. Kaine became a 'pagerunner', a character who escapes his or her own book and ultimately left the Bookworld altogether for the real world, where he ran for high political office during the events of Lost in a Good Book, only to be thwarted by Thursday and JurisFiction.By the events of Something Rotten, Kaine had advanced to the office of Chancellor, making him the second most powerful man in the land. He was using Mycroft Next's invention, the Ovinator, to manipulate Parliament into doing what he wanted. During the events of that novel, where he was made real and ultimately lost the Ovinator, he was removed from power. First Among Sequels reveals he has been arrested and imprisoned.
Lavoisier
Member of the ChronoGuard and former partner of Colonel Next. Appears briefly at the end of Eyre Affair, questioning Thursday about her father. He plays a much larger role in Lost in a Good Book, where he is hired by Goliath to eradicate Landen Parke-Laine. He holds a strong grudge against Thursday Next, and refuses to honor his part of the deal between her and Goliath as revenge for "what she did to him." This action has yet to occur in Thursday's timeline.Granny Next
Always clad in blue gingham, 108-year-old Granny Next claims not to be able to die until she's read the ten most boring classics. She helps Thursday realize her bookjumping abilities by having her read The Flopsy Bunnies aloud over and over. In The Well of Lost Plots she comes to stay with Thursday in Caversham Heights and helps her to remember Landen and defeat Aornis's mindworm, assuring her that the real Aornis will be much easier.Granny's identity comes into question later on when Thursday realizes that both her grandmothers are long dead and she's only known Granny Next for about three years. Finally when Thursday is sentenced for her Jane Eyre fiction infraction—twenty years in blue gingham and having to read the ten most boring classics before she can die—she realizes that Granny is herself seventy years in the future. As friends and yet-unborn family members gather, Thursday reads the last paragraph of The Faerie Queen to Granny, who dies peacefully.
Granny's long life includes many interesting jobs, such as working in many different divisions of SpecOps
SpecOps
SpecOps is a fictional overarching British governmental force in Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next series of novels. It was established in 1928 to handle policing duties "too unusual or too specialized" to be handled by the regular police. The force and divisions are similar in name to the real world...
, spending twenty-four hours as a man and ruling as God Emperor of the Universe.
Perkins and Snell
David "Pinky" Perkins and Akrid Snell were the lead characters in a set of detective novels and both worked as JurisFiction agents.Perkins headed up the Grammasite Research facility, located in a land appropriated from an unpublished fantasy novel (The Sword of the Zenobians), which is populated by many fictional creatures who were unable to live safely within their own novels. He was slain when the Minotaur, held captive within the fantasy, was deliberately released to kill him.
Snell worked as the lawyer for JurisFiction. He is the first to contact Thursday by Footnoterphone in Lost in a Good Book, and as head of the JurisFiction legal team defends her at her first hearing in Franz Kafka
Franz Kafka
Franz Kafka was a culturally influential German-language author of short stories and novels. Contemporary critics and academics, including Vladimir Nabokov, regard Kafka as one of the best writers of the 20th century...
's The Trial
The Trial
The Trial is a novel by Franz Kafka, first published in 1925. One of Kafka's best-known works, it tells the story of a man arrested and prosecuted by a remote, inaccessible authority, with the nature of his crime revealed neither to him nor the reader.Like Kafka's other novels, The Trial was never...
. When contact was lost with Perkins, he, accompanied by Thursday Next, Miss Havisham and Commander Bradshaw, entered the research facility to investigate. When a misspelling vyrus was released within Perkin's laboratory, Snell stayed behind to attempt to deal with it. He died from his injuries shortly afterwards.
Brik Schitt-Hawse
A senior Goliath employee and half-brother of Jack Schitt. Schitt-Hawse is primarily responsible for the eradication from history of Landen Parke-Laine during the events of Lost in a Good Book, in order to blackmail Thursday into retrieving Jack Schitt from inside Poe's The Raven. Thursday agreed to retrieve Schitt, only for Schitt-Hawse to subsequently imprison her, intending to study her bookjumping ability in order to open up new potential markets for the Goliath Corporation within fiction. Thursday was able to escape with the assistance of Miss Havisham and went to live in the Bookworld in order to hide from Goliath.Schitt-Hawse reappeared briefly in Something Rotten, when Thursday visited the CEO of the Goliath Corporation during a board meeting.
He is almost invariably accompanied by his henchmen, Mr. Chalk and Mr. Cheese, although by the time of Something Rotten Cheese has been reassigned to work at a Goliath-owned café.
Bartholomew Stiggins
Bartholomew Stiggins is a NeanderthalNeanderthal
The Neanderthal is an extinct member of the Homo genus known from Pleistocene specimens found in Europe and parts of western and central Asia...
and head of the Swindon branch of SpecOps
SpecOps
SpecOps is a fictional overarching British governmental force in Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next series of novels. It was established in 1928 to handle policing duties "too unusual or too specialized" to be handled by the regular police. The force and divisions are similar in name to the real world...
-13. He helped Thursday out during the events of Lost in a Good Book when she has a run-in, engineered by Aornis Hades, with another Neanderthal. He reappears during Something Rotten, when he accompanies her to the old Goliath laboratory facilities in the hope of finding information that would allow his race to breed successfully, something that was left out when their race was brought back to life through genetic engineering. In return for Thursday's assistance, Stiggins helps her win a critical croquet
Croquet
Croquet is a lawn game, played both as a recreational pastime and as a competitive sport. It involves hitting plastic or wooden balls with a mallet through hoops embedded into the grass playing court.-History:...
game by providing a number of Neanderthal players to fill gaps on the team. His name is a reference to Stig of the Dump
Stig of the Dump
Stig of the Dump is a children's novel by Clive King published in 1963. It is regarded as a modern children's classic and is often read in schools. It has been twice adapted for television, in 1981 and in 2002.-Plot summary:...
.
Cindy Stoker
Cindy is a professional assassin known as the Windowmaker (the first use of that name was due to a typographical error in a newspaper) who has finished off sixty-seven people (sixty-eight if you count Samuel Pring, but she later admits that was a fluke). In Something Rotten she has a contract to exterminate Thursday. Cindy is aware that Thursday knows she is an assassin, while Thursday knows Cindy wants to kill her. Spike is oblivious to both of these facts, and is happily married to her. After she is hit on the head by a falling piano stool she offers to replace a dying Thursday on her way to the afterlife, knowing she will never leave prison if she survives or be with Spike or their daughter again, and making up partly for her wicked deeds.Harris Tweed
A JurisFiction agent from the real world. He is revealed as being a villain towards the end of The Well of Lost Plots. As a result of his actions, Tweed was banished from the Bookworld and now lives in Swindon. His name is a pun on a type of woollen cloth called Harris TweedHarris Tweed
Harris Tweed is a cloth that has been handwoven by the islanders on the Isles of Harris, Lewis, Uist and Barra in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland, using local wool....
.
Melanie Bradshaw
Wife of Trafford Bradshaw, to whom she has now been married for fifty years (the pair celebrate their golden wedding anniversary at the end of Something Rotten). As the books never describe her character to any great degree, Melanie remains in the background. Hence, no reader ever discovers that she is, in fact, a gorilla, although she often attempts to dress in standard female clothing, with varying degrees of success. Melanie often babysits Friday Next when Thursday is off on assignment and the two are very close.Commander Trafford Bradshaw
The main character of a series of 1920s adventure stories for boys. An early Booksplorer, Bradshaw now works as an agent for JurisFiction (he is a former Bellman as well) and is considered to be one of their best operatives; his maps, while sometimes incomplete, are a most trusted resource for Bookworld explorers.The Great Panjandrum
The supposed creator of the BookWorld, and is worshipped as a god. Appears at the end of Well as a literal deus ex machinaDeus ex machina
A deus ex machina is a plot device whereby a seemingly inextricable problem is suddenly and abruptly solved with the contrived and unexpected intervention of some new event, character, ability, or object.-Linguistic considerations:...
, as it is summoned by Thursday through an emergency glass box located inside her standard issue equipment. It is unclear of the Great Panjandrum's true nature, and it appearance is based on the appearance of whoever views it; for example, Thursday sees it as a woman in her mid-thirties, like herself while a noted Jurisfiction sculptor perceived the entity as a fellow stonemason.
The Minotaur
Wanted murderer in the Book World, he escapes and works under the alias of Norman Johnson. In Something Rotten he is tainted with Slapstick to help track him across fiction, but he uses it to try to kill Thursday several times. Based on the minotaurMinotaur
In Greek mythology, the Minotaur , as the Greeks imagined him, was a creature with the head of a bull on the body of a man or, as described by Roman poet Ovid, "part man and part bull"...
from Greek mythology
Greek mythology
Greek mythology is the body of myths and legends belonging to the ancient Greeks, concerning their gods and heroes, the nature of the world, and the origins and significance of their own cult and ritual practices. They were a part of religion in ancient Greece...
.
Randolph and Lola
Assigned to stay with Thursday in the unpublished novel Caversham Heights during the events of Lost in a Good Book, Randolph and Lola started out as truly generic characters, being sexless, ageless, nameless and with no distinguishing features of any kind. Under Thursday's influence, the pair gradually began to take on more distinctive characteristics, developing personalities, choosing genders, apparent ages and final names, Thursday having initially dubbed them as obb and ibb respectively, just to distinguish between them. The two later gained capital letters before changing names. Randolph took on the persona and appearance of a gentleman in his fifties, hoping to be cast in the role of a father figure or kindly mentor. Lola developed as an attractive young woman, aiming for a position as heroine in an adventure-style tale. Although the pair argued constantly, they ultimately realized that they were in love and were instrumental in the reorganization of Caversham Heights into a book where characters from other novels could take holidays away from the rather repetitious nature of their roles.DCI Jack Spratt
Jack SprattJack Spratt
Jack Spratt is the protagonist in a series of alternate history science fiction fantasy novels by Jasper Fforde. He is the same character from the English nursery rhyme. As revealed in The Big Over Easy, for example, he hates eating fat, and was once married to a woman who ate nothing else .Spratt...
is the main character in the unpublished novel Caversham Heights where Thursday stays as part of the Character Exchange Program during the events of The Well of Lost Plots. He is also the protagonist in his own series of books written by Fforde.
Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle
Mrs. Tiggy-WinkleThe Tale of Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle
The Tale of Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle is a children's book written and illustrated by Beatrix Potter. It was published by Frederick Warne & Co. in October 1905. Mrs. Tiggy-winkle is a hedgehog and a washerwoman who lives in a tiny cottage in the fells of the Lake District. A child named Lucie happens upon...
is an active JurisFiction agent and their washerwoman. She trains Emperor Zhark and advocates for the appearances of hedgehogs in other works such as mentions in Shakespeare's
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...
plays. After Thursday's retirement she helps to run JurisFiction and visits Thursday asking for help.
Emperor Zhark
A ruthless tyrant from a series of sci-fi novels, Zhark begins work at JurisFiction around the same time as Thursday and is apprenticed to Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle. His conflicts within his books, often involving the lives of millions, are a point of contention requiring the Judgement of SolomonSolomon
Solomon , according to the Book of Kings and the Book of Chronicles, a King of Israel and according to the Talmud one of the 48 prophets, is identified as the son of David, also called Jedidiah in 2 Samuel 12:25, and is described as the third king of the United Monarchy, and the final king before...
. Often punished for overdoing it, such as when he invades a Western with his armies to save Thursday, accidentally killing the main character. When he learns that his author, Handley Paige, is planning to kill him off, he manages to track him down and convince him otherwise.
Millon de Floss
Millon is a member of the Amalgamated Union of Stalkers, authorised by SpecOpsSpecOps
SpecOps is a fictional overarching British governmental force in Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next series of novels. It was established in 1928 to handle policing duties "too unusual or too specialized" to be handled by the regular police. The force and divisions are similar in name to the real world...
-33. He has something of a talent for spotting rising stars, having started stalking the legendary actress Lola Vavoom when she was just a bit part player. He is now a Grade 1 stalker, allowed to stalk the very highest level of celebrity, but has, instead, chosen to become Thursday's officially-licenced stalker, feeling that she, while not at the highest level as yet, is destined for great things. Having published his autobiography A Stalk on the Wild Side, Millon has attained a not-inconsiderable level of celebrity himself and has his own stalker, Adam Gnusense (who, as an experienced stalker himself, having risen to Grade 3, has recently acquired his own stalker, who he describes as being a Grade 34 loser after catching him rummaging through his dustbins).
Millon is intelligent, polite and has considerable knowledge of conspiracy theories, a resource that Thursday draws upon when trying to locate a clone of William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...
. He accompanied her to Area 21, an area in mid-Wales
Wales
Wales is a country that is part of the United Kingdom and the island of Great Britain, bordered by England to its east and the Atlantic Ocean and Irish Sea to its west. It has a population of three million, and a total area of 20,779 km²...
where the Goliath Corporation had their laboratories, to help out. As this was technically outside the remit of his stalker activities, he asked, in return, if he could be her official biographer, something to which Thursday readily agreed.
Many of the excerpts from fictional works found at the beginning of each chapter have ostensibly been written by de Floss. His name is an allusion to the novel The Mill on the Floss
The Mill on the Floss
The Mill on the Floss is a novel by George Eliot , first published in three volumes in 1860 by William Blackwood. The first American edition was by Thomas Y...
by George Eliot
George Eliot
Mary Anne Evans , better known by her pen name George Eliot, was an English novelist, journalist and translator, and one of the leading writers of the Victorian era...
, which Thursday and Miss Havisham visit on assignment in The Well of Lost Plots.
George Formby
Made England's President-for-life after his resistance work during the German Occupation. In 1988 he is still entertaining whenever possible, and he is the only politician who avoids Yorrick Kaine enough to remain immune to the ovinator and thus oppose Kaine's schemes. He dies of natural causes two days after the Swindon Mallets win the Superhoop croquet championship and serenades the ferryman on his final journey. See George Formby, Jr. for information on the real one.John Henry Goliath V
Named after two giants and quite tall himself, John HenryJohn Henry (folklore)
John Henry is an American folk hero and tall tale. Henry worked as a "steel-driver"—a man tasked with hammering and chiseling rock in the construction of tunnels for railroad tracks. In the legend, John Henry's prowess as a steel-driver was measured in a race against a steam powered hammer,...
Goliath V is the great-great-grandson of the founder of the Goliath Corporation and its current CEO. He meets with Thursday personally to apologize to her, but in reality he used Goliath's ovinator to convince her to forgive them. His fate after Goliath's loss to the Toast Marketing Board is unknown.
Hamlet
The Prince of Denmark, from the ShakespeareWilliam Shakespeare
William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...
play
Hamlet
The Tragical History of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, or more simply Hamlet, is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1599 and 1601...
. He accompanied Thursday on her return to the real world at the beginning of Something Rotten, as he was concerned at the perception in the Outland that he was an indecisive character. During his time there, he became romantically involved with Lady Emma Hamilton
Emma, Lady Hamilton
Emma, Lady Hamilton is best remembered as the mistress of Lord Nelson and as the muse of George Romney. She was born Amy Lyon in Ness near Neston, Cheshire, England, the daughter of a blacksmith, Henry Lyon, who died when she was two months old...
and found a new decisiveness within himself, one that he originally planned to take back into his play and rewrite it from within, portraying himself as a much more dynamic character. Ultimately, however, he came to realise that the flaws in his character are what make his play memorable and much loved, and elected to leave his play as it was. He chose to focus his energies elsewhere, joining JurisFiction as their agent for the Shakespearean and Marlowe
Christopher Marlowe
Christopher Marlowe was an English dramatist, poet and translator of the Elizabethan era. As the foremost Elizabethan tragedian, next to William Shakespeare, he is known for his blank verse, his overreaching protagonists, and his mysterious death.A warrant was issued for Marlowe's arrest on 18 May...
plays.
Hamlet's Danish origins are a point of contention during Kaine's anti-Denmark campaign, but he bluffs Kaine into thinking he has gathered an army of Daphne Farquitt fans and the Copenhagen
Copenhagen
Copenhagen is the capital and largest city of Denmark, with an urban population of 1,199,224 and a metropolitan population of 1,930,260 . With the completion of the transnational Øresund Bridge in 2000, Copenhagen has become the centre of the increasingly integrating Øresund Region...
-born author herself to save Thursday at a critical moment. As a parting gift, Thursday gave Hamlet Alan the dodo, the tearaway son of her own dodo, Pickwick, to take with him, as Hamlet had proven to be the only one able to get Alan to behave himself.
Tuesday Next
Daughter of Thursday Next. She first appeared at the very end of Something Rotten, when many of Thursday's as-yet unborn descendants appear. In First Among Sequels, she is shown to be a mathematical genius, having solved Fermat's Last TheoremFermat's Last Theorem
In number theory, Fermat's Last Theorem states that no three positive integers a, b, and c can satisfy the equation an + bn = cn for any integer value of n greater than two....
at the age of nine.
Friday Next
Friday is the son of Thursday and Landen Parke-Laine. While he is an infant during the chronology of the novels, Friday later joins SO-12, the Chronoguard, rising to become head of the department and, according to his grandfather, Colonel Next, a time manipulator of extraordinary skill. As such, he appears as an adult on a couple of occasions in the books, although is unidentified until the end of Something Rotten. As a baby, Friday speaks only Lorem IpsumLorem ipsum
In publishing and graphic design, lorem ipsum[p] is placeholder text commonly used to demonstrate the graphics elements of a document or visual presentation, such as font, typography, and layout...
, due to his upbringing in the Bookworld. He is close to Melanie Bradshaw, who frequently baby-sat for him.
In First Among Sequels, Friday is apparently a lazy, slovenly adolescent whom Thursday calls a "tedious teenage cliché: grunting, sighing at any request, and staying in bed until past midday." In actuality, this indolence is a cover for his secret agenda to overthrow Chronoguard, which his future self has found to be corrupt.
William Shgakespeafe
The only surviving clone of William ShakespeareWilliam Shakespeare
William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...
, created in a secret long-abandoned project by Goliath. He is rescued by Thursday, Bowden, Stig, and Spike, and is recruited by JurisFiction to rewrite Hamlet and The Merry Wives of Windsor, which merged in Hamlet's absence. Shgakespeafe appears to be just as talented a writer as Shakespeare; indeed, all of his lines in Something Rotten are quotes from Shakespeare's plays. He is athetically skilled, having lived much of his life avoiding cloned creatures.
St Zvlkx
A thirteenth-century prophet from Swindon, St Zvlkx's sixth Revealment was a prediction of his own resurrection in 1988, which Joffy Next prepares for by learning Old English to communicate with the saint. Joffy and the Idolatry Friends of St Zvlkx had sold the seer's wisdom to the Toast Marketing Board, which Zvlkx approved of. Over his stay in the twentieth century he is revealed to live nothing like a saintly life, and he is killed by a bus on the way to a bookie's. After Thursday helps the Swindon Mallets croquetCroquet
Croquet is a lawn game, played both as a recreational pastime and as a competitive sport. It involves hitting plastic or wooden balls with a mallet through hoops embedded into the grass playing court.-History:...
team win the Superhoop, fulfilling the seventh and final Revealment, Thursday's father explains that Zvlkx had travelled through time himself, and that his Revealments were in fact bets now worth billions of pounds. Because the bookie's was owned ultimately by Goliath, the Toast Marketing Board took control of the majority of the multinational and ended their reign over England.
Jenny Next
Jenny is the youngest of Thursday's three children, and ten years old during the time of the 5th novel. She is the only child in Thursday's family not to be named after a day of the week, so that (in Thursday's words) "one of us should have a semblance of normality". Jenny never actually makes an appearance during the novel, and is later revealed to be nonexistent, placed in Thursday's mind in an act of vengeance by Aornis Hades. Thursday occasionally remembers this, then forgets that she has remembered. Thursday's family understands this and works to keep 'Jenny' alive to save her from torment.Thursday1-4
Thursday1-4 is the fictional version of Thursday Next, the main character of the first four books in a bestselling series loosely based on Thursday's adventures in SpecOps and Jurisfiction. Thursday1-4 is portrayed as unnecessarily violent and somewhat sleazy, and the real Thursday describes her as being "mostly action, and very little thought." Despite the books being set several years before, Thursday1-4's apparent age is identical to the real Thursday, a fact that is explained in One of Our Thursdays Is MissingOne of our Thursdays is Missing
One of our Thursdays is Missing is the sixth Thursday Next book, and was published in February 2011 in the UK and was published in March in the United States...
.
Thursday5
Thursday5 is the main character in the sixth book of the Thursday Next series. In response to the real Thursday's complaints about her portrayal in the first four books, and her insistence that the fifth book in the series reflect her more sensitive side, the fictional Thursday5 is depicted as overly softhearted and a bit of a hippieHippie
The hippie subculture was originally a youth movement that arose in the United States during the mid-1960s and spread to other countries around the world. The etymology of the term 'hippie' is from hipster, and was initially used to describe beatniks who had moved into San Francisco's...
. Thursday takes her on as a cadet for training for Jurisfiction, but is consistently frustrated by Thursday5's incompetence and excessive pacifism. Like Thursday1-4, Thursday5 also looks identical to the real Thursday, despite a supposed age difference.