Shared universe fiction, a modern term, refers to fiction that takes in a universe in which characters from different stories can meet and interact. Thus, the characters are members of a single "universe" or fictional reality, which is generally assumed to be separate from the "real world." Doubtless, this term (and the term 'aternate reality") did not exist during the 19th century. "Alternate history" seems to have had its origins with Joan Aiken's The Wolves of Willoughby Chase , the first of her "wolves chronicles," a series of YA books that were themselves Dickensian, set in an alternate 19th century, in which an underground channel was built between Britain and the continent, through which ravening wolves re-entered England and menace the English countryside. There is apparnetly even an alternate form of cockney spoken there, in which the word "naffy" roughly tranlates to the modern American slang "cool."
Dickens, of course, did not knowingly set out to create such fiction. But, in a sense, all fiction is alternative in that the characters and incidents did not occurr in reality--at least, not the reality we know. In regard to the concept of a "shared universe," that has to even more recent. Exactly when I can't say, but examples of it abound nowadays, the most extreme example being The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen comics (and film adaptation), in which all the fiction up through the early twentieth, as well as chacters of folklore and myth, happen to be real and historical. On a related note, author Stephen King, at some point in the career of his enormous body of fiction, decided to set most of his fiction in the same universe--read closely, and you'll references scattered throughout his work, at least later in his career, to his other novels. I said "most" because King scholars (and King himself) technically consider his work to comprise a vast "multiverse," set across innumerable realities, with the Dark Tower series and world being the central linch pin. Even without the Dark Tower, setting King's fiction in a "multiverse" would be a necessity, given that the futures explored in two of his Bachman books (The Long Walk and The Running Man)take place in very different dystopian futures, not to mention the post-apocolyptic world of The Stand, which never happened in his slew of recent books. Other authors, such as horror writer Brian Keene, have followed suit with King, and have connected their novels and characters as well.
But back to Dickens. In all of his canonical novels, there is not one verifiable incident where a character from one work crosses paths with another. Pastiches, however, are another matter. I've often speculated, for instance, on how a character like Jack Dawkins might cross paths with Abel Magwitch--after all, both were sent to Australia. An interesting subject for a pastiche, though I've actually found with all the Dodger pastiches out there, that someone's alread done that:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1909609439/ref=x_gr_w_bb?ie=UTF8&tag=httpwwwgoodco-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=190960943
So, then, it's suggested that least two of Dickens' works take place in the same reality. And with the subject of Dodger's adventures in Australia is on the table, I'd like cvall attention to Escape of the Artful Dodger, a Tv mini-series actaully produced in Australia. It, too, takes place in a shared universe, as is evident when both Mr. Micawber and Uriah Heep (from David Copperfield) turn up. The series also has Fagin escape the gallows, the same approach taken by The Further Adventures of Oliver Twist, another mini-series pastiche movie shown in Britain back in 1981. Escape also has the Dodger crossing paths briefly with a man who appears to be a young Charles Dickens.
That's another thing that pastiche sometimes do, and far more frequently than crossovers between novels. A great many pastiches seem to be built on the premise that characters actually lived, and that Dickens "fictionalized" their biographies.
Now, in my opinion, it's a bit more plausible in light of the shared universe, that 1) All the characters of one particular writer would inhabit the same universe, and 2) In that particular reality, the author himself would not exist. Perhaps in that timeline, Charles Dickens' parents, for example, never met.
In Robert Bloch's short story,"The Plot is the Thing," the protagonist becomes trapped in a "movie reality" where the characters of all the classic Hammer monster movies are real, but where their creaters--Gaston Laroux, Mary Shelly, Bram Stoker--do not exist.
http://biblioteca.mygeocom.com/wp-content/uploads/filebase/B/Bloch%20Robert/Bloch,%20Robert%20-%20The%20Plot%20Is%20The%20Thing%20%28v1.0%29.html
There would also likely be no crossovers with character not invented by Dickens, like say, Van Helsing in Peter David's Artful. Such characters would in habit their own relaities. There might also be a "waystation" reality, where one could travel to the different universe--but that's something else.
One other thing regarding Escape of the Arful Dodger, and I've noticed this in at least one other pastiche, is that Brownlow is Oliver's grandfather. The 1982 version of OT makes Browlow the great uncle. In the book, Dickens establishes no blood connection between Brownlow and either the Flemings or the Leefords. He's just a freind of Leeford, Oliver's father. The 1948 version made Brownlow Oliver's grandfather, though, and other versions, including the musical, followed suit to the point to where it's assumed to be canonical when it is not.
The concept of a shared Dickensian universe was taken to a comic extreme in a epsiode of the Charley Blake Show (which I mentioned in previous post), which has characters from a number Dickens novels owing money to Scrooge, including both Oliver Twist and Fagin. Then there was this interactive play, called Twisted: A Dickensian Murder Mystery, which took place at the Ebenezer Maxwell mansion in 2013. The setup is that an adult Oliver has been murdered, and characters from several of Dickens' works are suspects, including, as I recall, Miss Havishham from Great Expectations. Both author Dickens himself and his characters interact in order to solve the mystery.
http://www.freedomsbackyard.com/programs-events/murder-mystery-twisted-murder-a-dickensian-mystery/
While the above two instances take an approach to the material, in which all the characters interacting at once, there's another example that is only slight, and for that, a bit more contorversial.
Near the beginning to the fairly recent BBC take on of Bleak House, a "Mr. Brownlow" is spoken two in the courtroom discussing the Jarndyce vs. Jarndyce case. Correct me if I'm wrong but I don't think this man's name is in the book at all. So was this the same Borwnlow in Oliver Twist, or perhaps a relation of his? In any case, a shared universe appears to be suggested by this adaptation.
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