I am always glad when one of those fellows dies, for then I know I have the whole of him on my shelf.” So said the ever tactless Lord Melbourne (1779-1848), speaking of the poet George Crabbe (1754-1832). He could have no such assurance now.
Continuation novels, to give them their respectable name, have been a thing since Kingsley Amis’s James Bond pastiche Colonel Sun, written under the pseudonym of Robert Markham, in 1968. Ian Fleming had published 11 Bond novels before his death, at the age of 56, in 1964. His estate was eager to continue production and offered Amis, who had written a “dossier” on Bond, £10,000 for the job. The book was not much admired but there have now been more than 50 Bond continuations.
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