The fan-fic phenomenon seems to have gotten its start in the wake of Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, with William Hogarth and Alexander Pope riffing on the adventures of Swift’s hero (and, in Pope’s case, his put-upon wife). Add to that Shamela, Henry Fielding’s lusty takedown of Samuel Richardson’s Pamela; or, Virtue Rewarded, and the genre is well and truly established. – The Atlantic