Ten iconic fictional characters hated by their authors

Many authors have a love-hate relationship with the characters they create, which ironically seems to turn to hate-hate when the character in question gets more famous than the creator. Surely this is every author’s dream to have their successful character selling lots of books and making them lots of money? Au contraire, the ungrateful egoists say. In most cases, the author’s resent their characters popularity when it eclipses their own or their other, more serious work, whether that be painting or literature. Like with children, these fictional characters take on a life of their own that can’t be controlled by their creators. (Tellingly, Lewis Carroll, Hergé and Tove Jansson didn’t have any children.) And indeed, the author’s die and the characters live on forever.

(A bit like inventors regretting their inventions, mused H as I was telling her about this post: Mikhail Kalashnikov and his AK-47, Oppenheimer and Einstein with their atomic bombs, Tim Berners-Lee and the World Wide Web, Ethan Zuckerman with pop-up ads and John Sylvan with Keurig K-Cups (the single-use coffee device which wastes billions of plastic capsules every year), they all regretted their deadly/annoying creations. These inventions likewise took on a life of their own, often far removed from what the creator intended. Kalashnikov wished he’d invented a lawnmower instead!)