Early examples include James Fenimore Cooper's Leatherstocking Tales (1823) and Honoré de Balzac's La Comédie humaine (1829).
Typically authored by a single writer, some series are collaborative efforts driven by publishers, as seen in The Hardy Boys or Sweet Valley High.
The popularity of series fiction has grown with the commercialization of publishing, the rise of fan communities, and the expansion into multimedia franchises.
[2]: 539 Referring to non-English language examples, Watson mentioned series begun by German Erich Kästner with Emil and the Detectives (1929) and French Paul Berna with A Hundred Million Francs (1955).
[2]: 539 During that time, Edward Stratemeyer's Tom Swift series was extremely popular among young readers in the United States.
He notes that its key characteristics that distinguish it from other types of fiction is its "extended overall length and its composition in separate narratives".
Alison Uttley’s Little Grey Rabbit series begun in the 1920s and continued into the 1970s, with later books receiving explanatory notes about history).
He also observes that series are often likely to suffer from the problem of "melodramatic inflation"; i.e. "the necessity of increasing the magnitude of threats that the hero is required to overcome".
[7][8] Other reasons for continuing the series have been described as the author's desire to "fill in narrative gaps" or to write "major ideological reappraisals".
[3]: 880 Such communities, particularly in the Internet era, can also lead to increased interaction between readers and writers, influencing the course of the series in line with fan's wishes as expressed online.
[3]: 882 Nonetheless, even series that suffer from lack of critical acclaim and formulaic repetition can be long running, commercially successful and have a dedicated fanbase.
[1]: 1–2 Expected familiarity with the setting, character and author style has in fact been identified as part of the appeal of series fiction.
[1]: 7–8, 205 A series is sometimes differentiated from a work that is divided into smaller installments due to its size, but which forms part of a single story that begins in the first volume and concludes in the subsequent ones.
[3]: 880 Victor Watson distinguishes progressive and successive types of series, with the former being characterized by character growth, with books intended to be read in order, usually chronological.