Boxall's 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die discussion

In the self-referential spirit of the group, I thought we could fish for characters who appear in more than one of the books in the list. I remember a few, and with your help I think we can compile quite a list. Historical characters might be particularly useful, since they are bound to come up in more than one book.

I'll start with the ones I can remember:

Bertha/Antoinette, Mr Rochester, Jane Eyre and Grace Poole are central in both Jane Eyre and Wide Sargasso Sea

Obviously Alice is both in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass and Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There

Marlow appears in both Lord Jim and Heart of Darkness

I believe The Rainbow and Women in Love feature Ursula and Gudrun Brangwen

Stephen Dedalus is in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Ulysses

Quentin Compson, one of the main characters in The Sound and the Fury, is also the narrator of Absalom, Absalom!

The Hobbit: Or There and Back Again and The Lord of the Rings share Bilbo Baggins and Gandalf

Fanny is the narrator in both The Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate

Rabbit in Rabbit, Run, Rabbit Is Rich and Rabbit Redux, though it's a bit of an obvious choice

Dirk Gently in Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency and The Long Dark Tea-time of the Soul

Nathan Zuckerman is the narrator in American Pastoral and The Human Stain

And let us not forget Christ in Ben Hur, The Story of Christ and The Last Temptation of Christ. I'm sure the Devil must appear in quite a few of them too...

Over to you now!

Interesting idea Lauli! The only one I can think of to add right now is that Philip Marlowe is the protagonist of The Big Sleep, Farewell, My Lovely and The Long Goodbye

Taking the old thread to the next level. I'm impressed! I can't contribute anything here yet. I've read only about a hundred, ha, ha.

Joselito wrote: "Taking the old thread to the next level. I'm impressed! I can't contribute anything here yet. I've read only about a hundred, ha, ha."

The two childhood friends Kiyoaki Matsugae and Shigekuni Honda appearing in the tetralogy of the Japanese novel, The Sea of Fertility. However, since Matsugae died in the first book, he reincarnated in the succeeding ones as different characters. There are other characters appearing at least in more than 1 book such as Satoko Ayakura (Kiyoaki's lover), Tadeshina (Satoko's maid), Imperial Prince Toin, Shigeyuki Iinuma (Kiyoaki's servant and Isao's father), Keiko Hisamatsu, and Rié (Honda's wife).

I remember Elizabeth Costello in J.M.Coetzee's two ex-1001 novels: Elizabeth Costello and Slow Man. Both novels were dropped in the 2010 version though.

Holmes and Watson in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and The Hound of the Baskervilles.

Several characters seem to flow in and out (or at least be referenced by another character) in Bret Easton Ellis's works.

I'll try to come up with some others. :)