I don't know if this has come up previously or if Jasper has said anything in the past - I know I wanted to ask him during a talk in Ipswich last year but chickened out cos it was live on radio...

It occurred to me that, since this story is set within what was previously Caversham Heights, and features Ibb and Obb and the various Oral Trad characters on their character exchange breaks, was the Thursday Next series simply an elaborate premise to get this book published?

As I understand, this was the first of Jasper's novels to be written so it would seem plausible that it was also the one he was most keen on getting published. And so from this desire grew the TN series. Not, as Jasper has said, a love story about Spike and Cindy, but a stage-setting for the haven book of Caversham Heights, which has clearly been successfully saved from demolition.

Thoughts?

I asked Jasper about this at one of the Fourth Bear signings. Well, not about the whole TN series, but about WoLP in particular. He replied that WoLP was intentionally written to provide a tie in to the NC books.

That is good news indeed, many thanks for your intrepid detectiving.

What's fun is that there is circular self-reference going on. WOLP mentions this book (and by extension, the series), and The Fourth Bear mentions Thursday Next (in movie form).

Plus the new book (I really believe this is giving absolutely nothing away) refers to an incident in The Big Over Easy which in turn takes place in one of the previous books (forget exaclty which, but presumably WOLP).

Hi. On this theory there is some updated info on your observations about the book on wikipedia type in jasper fforde and read on. there are references to the history of the books right there