Five top literary secret shared universes

Whitney Collins is the author of The Hamster Won't Die: A Treasury of Feral Humor, creator of the website The Zen of Gen X. At B&N Reads she tagged five top shared universes--"the idea of re-using characters from one story in another, or creating a fictional universe in which to set different stories"--in literature, including:

William Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha County Novels

Yes, none other than William Faulkner was an enthusiastic builder of shared universes. His series of novels and stories set in Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi are famously linked by the members of the Compson family, the main characters of The Sound and the Fury, who also appear in Absalom, Absalom! and are referred to in other novels and stories. As in any other multiverse, you can keep your eyes peeled for characters from one book or story to appear in the background of others, ultimately building Yoknapatawpha County into one of the most realistic fictional universes of all time.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue