Before Fanfiction: Recovering the Literary History of American Media Fandom investigates the overlapping cultures of fandom and American literature from the late 1800s to the mid-1940s, exploding the oft-repeated myth that fandom has its origins in the male-dominated letter columns of science fiction pulp magazines in the 1930s.
By reexamining the work of popular American women writers and their fans, Alexandra Edwards draws previously ignored fangirls into the spotlight.
Available in hardcover, paperback, and ebook.
Recognition
Honorable Mention, MLA Prize for Contingent Faculty & Independent Scholars
Before Fanfiction received an honorable mention for the 2022-23 MLA Prize for Contingent Faculty and Independent Scholars, which “honors distinguished published research in the fields of modern languages and literatures, including English, and recognizes achievements and contributions of contingent faculty members and independent scholars.”
In the words of the prize committee,
“Before Fanfiction: Recovering the Literary History of American Media Fandom makes an ambitious intervention and speaks across genres and disciplines. Alexandra Edwards’s study will become required reading in the growing genre of fanfiction studies. Edwards conclusively disproves the usual story of its male sci-fi origins by uncovering a rich history of women’s magazine fandoms in the early twentieth century, demonstrating that popular readers were active participants, recovering the rich history of women’s clubs, fan mail, and magazines. In its superb archival research, its skillful cross-disciplinary analysis, and its deserved attention to issues of racial reclamation and queer eroticism, Before Fanfiction offers a model of how to perform a joyful recuperation of popular work, asking readers, ‘What other stories can we say yes to?’”
Praise
“Before Fanfiction significantly expands, extends, revises, and reanimates our understanding of the multiple histories of fandom and, in particular, fan writing, through a consideration of other transformative literary practices. Edwards’s boldly revisionist approach makes this book essential reading, decentering the white male science fiction fan conventions from fandom’s origin stories, in favor of women’s clubs, circles, and magazines of the early twentieth century.”
—Henry Jenkins, author of Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture
“A vivid investigation of the historical bonds that link fandom, criticism, and creative practice. Edwards shows how the fan cultures of today are rooted in a matriarchal and thoroughly literary lineage that extends well beyond our contemporary mediaverse.”
—Sheila Liming, author of What a Library Means to a Woman: Edith Wharton and the Will to Collect Books
“Before Fanfiction reenergizes fan studies in exciting new directions that promise to revolutionize the field. Revising the ‘fandom creation myth,’ Edwards establishes a lineage of fan audiences through varied genealogies, including early literary fan communities, letter columns in literary magazines, and fan mail. Exploring an intersectional history of fan culture, Edwards changes our understanding of fandom today and, relevantly, what fandom can be in the future. A must-read for fan scholars and audiences alike.”
—Paul Booth, professor of media and popular culture at DePaul University and author of Playing Fans: Negotiating Fandom and Media in the Digital Age
About the Author
Alexandra Edwards teaches in the English department at Texas Christian University.