Old story / character - new life

I seem to be seeing a “trend” (maybe) where authors are picking up characters from other books and writing about them or using other books to build upon or base a story upon. Does one need to read the original in order to appreciate the new novel?

Books like:

Moby Dick --> Ahab’s Wife
Jane Eyre --> The Eyre Affair
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn --> Finn
Little Women --> March

I am sure there are more.

I had to read Ahab’s Wife for a book group, so I decided to read Moby Dick first. I really did not like Moby Dick and I am not sure if it enhanced my “Ahab’s Wife” experience.

The Eyre Affair, March and Finn sit by my bedside and I am trying to decide what to do about the “prequels”.

What are your thoughts? What are some other examples?

I read The Secret History of the Pink Carnation, which builds upon The Scarlet Pimpernel even though Sir Percy had such a minor appearance in it, and I was sadly disappointed that my favorite adventure books would have something like this paying homage to them. I spent the whole book looking for some redeeming factor in it, but alas there was none to be found!

So I guess it depends on the book you are wanting to read. I would like to read Finn because I greatly enjoyed Mark Twain's classic.

I read Wide Sargasso Sea at uni. It is an off-shoot of Jane Eyre, and tells the story of how Rochester met and came to be married to Grace Poole, and deals with the reasoning behind her madness. Very emotive and great to see the story from another POV.

Wide Sargasso Sea is a good example of how this trend isn't that recent too. It's probably one of the few examples of how it's done with talent, too.

I think I know two more:
Foe: J.M. Coetzee's take on Robinson Crusoe

Lotte In Weimar: Thomas Mann brings Charlotte from Goethe's The Passions of Young Werther to life.

For writers, it must be like writing fan fiction about their favourite books. Much like kids who write their own Harry Potter stories. It can be quite fun. In comics, there's also Alan Moore's The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen series, which assumes all fiction is real and coexists so that you can have the Invisible Man, Allan Quartermain, Captain Nemo, etc., together in the same story. Moore's stories are my favourite example of this trend; high entertaining stuff.

There's a TON of sequels(and prequels) to pride and prejudice. I recently finished one, called Presumption, and suddenly lost my taste for all. I wouldn't mind these sequels if the authors got the characters right, but they don't.

Yes you're right. I think this is natural because every writer needs to get his inspiration from somewhere. Or maybe it's just pure coincidence but I don't think so.

There are various books about Sherlock Holmes wife and Irene Adler who was a character in some Sherlock story. Also Scarlett from Gone With the Wind.