Tracing the industrial emergence of transmedia storytelling-typically branded a product of the contemporary digital media landscape-this book provides a historicised intervention into understandings of how fictional stories flow across multiple media forms. Through studies of the storyworlds constructed for The Wizard of Oz, Tarzan, and Superman, the book reveals how new developments in advertising, licensing, and governmental policy across the twentieth century enabled historical systems of transmedia storytelling to emerge, thereby providing a valuable contribution to the growing field of transmedia studies as well as to understandings of media convergence, popular culture, and historical media industries.

Matthew Freeman is Senior Lecturer in Media and Communication at Bath Spa University, UK and Director of its Media Convergence Research Centre. He is the author of Industrial Approaches to Media (2016), and the co-author of Transmedia Archaeology (2014).

Introduction: Why Historicise?

Part I: Defining Transmedia History

1. Characterising Transmedia Storytelling: Character-Building, World-Building, Authorship

2. Contextualising Transmedia Storytelling: Industrialisation, Consumer Culture, Media Regulation

Part II: Exploring Transmedia History

3. 1900-1918, From Fin-de-siècle to Fairy-Worlds: L. Frank Baum, the Land of Oz & Advertising

4. 1918-1938, From Fairy-Worlds to Jungles: Edgar Rice Burroughs Inc., Tarzan & Corporate Authorship

5. 1938-1958, From Jungles to Krypton: DC Comics, Superman & Industry Partnerships

Conclusion: Cross the Shifting Sands