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* ''[[The Guild of Specialists Trilogy]]'' is the absolute grandmaster of this trope. The three books are absolute works of art, each designed to look like a diary and filled to the brim with maps, diagrams, sketches, some folding out to as much as four or five pages. There are antique photographs (purportedly) of the characters and settings and museum-style photographs of objects that appear in the books. It is truly something to behold and the level of immersion the books create is fantastic.
* In ''[[Chronicles of Narnia]]'' it is a little-known piece of canon that [[C. S. Lewis|CS Lewis]] is recounting the tales as told to him by an unknown individual or individuals, likely one or more of the Pevensie children. This is made explicit in [[The Voyage of the Dawn Treader]]: "Lucy could only say, "It would break your heart." "Why," said I, "was it so sad: " "Sad!! No," said Lucy.". However, how he could have been told of the events of ''The Last Battle'', {{spoiler|since most of the series' human protagonists had, unbeknownst to them, died in a train wreck and gone to Aslan's country}}, is unkownunknown but could be explained by him being an [[Undead Author]], though, given the Wood Between the Worlds from ''[[The Magician's Nephew]]'', just about anything is possible. This trope is the reason why the narrator of the books often confesses ignorance as to things that the children themselves do not know. One reason he does this is that The Lion the Witch and The Wardrobe came about when three children, Margaret, Mary and Katherine, were evacuated from London and sent to live with him during the war (yes, [[Author Avatar|the professor is Lewis]]). The four children of the book [[wikipedia:The Chronicles of Narnia#Background and conception|are inspired by them]].
** Speaking of ''[[The Magician's Nephew]]'', it mentions that "Mr. [[Sherlock Holmes]] was still living in Baker Street," which is either an [[Intercontinuity Crossover]] or a Shout-Out from one Literary Agent to another.
* The first two-thirds of [[C. S. Lewis|CS Lewis]]' [[The Space Trilogy|Space Trilogy]], aka the Ransom novels, are based on the premise that Lewis is the ghostwriter for the "real" Doctor Ransom, whose name has been changed but whose bizarre interplanetary adventures are true. (In real [[Real Life]], Ransom was [[Write Who You Know|based on Lewis' good friend]] [[J. R. R. Tolkien|JRR Tolkien]].) ''Out of the Silent Planet'' even ends with a chapter explaining how the Lewis came to learn of the story from Ransom, and why they decided to publish the story in the guise of fiction: to avoid reprisals from the [[Real Life]] counterparts of the villains, and because the events were simply too outrageous to be believed if they were published as nonfiction. This is then followed by a letter from Ransom [[Self-Deprecation|pointing out all the details of the adventure that Lewis got wrong]] or were simply too esoteric to convey in writing. The next novel, ''Perelandra'' continues with the Agent Hypothesis in the text, but includes a preface stating that all the human characters are fictitious and non-allegorical. The final novel, ''That Hideous Strength'', drops all pretense, and in fact events in the book flatly contradict actual then-current political history.
* [[C. S. Lewis|CS Lewis]] also claims he stumbled upon ''[[The Screwtape Letters]]'' in a foreword in the book; given that they are letters from a [[Our Demons Are Different|demon]] to his apprentice, this one is forgivable. Lewis himself gives it only the briefest (and funniest) of [[Hand Wave]]s, asking the reader not to delve too deeply into how he acquired them.
* [[E. E. "Doc" Smith]] in the ''[[Lensman]]'' series refers to himself as "the historian" in later books, and mentions that he was the first person to read the declassified accounts of the characters' adventures.
* The author of ''[[A Series of Unfortunate Events]]'', "Lemony Snicket" (actually Daniel Handler) not only finds it his duty to research these "tales of misery and woe," but is also apparently related to two secondary characters. Handler himself claims to be the agent for Lemony Snicket.
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** Everything by [[Daniel Defoe]],
** Samuel Richardson's ''Pamela'' and ''Clarissa'',
** Jonathan Swift's ''[[Gulliver's Travels|Gullivers Travels]]''
** Lawrence Sterne's ''[[Tristram Shandy]]''—which — which is also the longest sustained attempt at subverting the trope.
* [[Isaac Asimov]]:
** The mystery novel ''Murder At The ABA'' takes the form of Asimov's dramatization of events as related to him by fictional character Darius Just (who bears a noticeable resemblance to real-world author [[Harlan Ellison]]). Asimov includes himself as a minor character in the story, and the book includes occasional footnote comments by Just and responses by Asimov.
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** This trope is parodied in ''Don Quixote'', because it was used by a lot of [[Weird Al Effect|(today forgotten)]] authors of chivalry books (an example is "The Knight Platir", a book burned in the famous scrutiny made in Don Quixote's library) claimed that they are based in an old manuscript found in an ancient pyramid or another ruined building in some faraway country, written in an exotic language by a wise, famed wizard who favoured the hero of the novel. Those claims are made to feign that the chivalry book was [[Inspired By]] real events. Cervantes twist this and uses it to a comic effect, explaining that the next part of the novel was found in some pamphlets and papers (only a few years old) found in Alcana de Toledo (a real city in Spain) in a silk mercer store, written in Arabic (a fair known language in Spain) by a (foolish) boy who didn't know what was written and so sold the papers to Cervantes for peanuts. If we include the funny name of the wizard and the fact that the [[Unreliable Narrator|second author, the translator and Cide Hamete Benengeli are always making comments about the book]], we can see that Cervantes want us to admit that all this tale is a long sequence of lies and nonsense... just like all the chivalry books.
* Chaucer combines this trope with [[Author Avatar]] in ''[[The Canterbury Tales]]'', which is presented as Chaucer's transcription of all the tales the other people on his pilgrimage are telling, and he throws in a couple of his own.
* In [[Spider Robinson]]'s ''[[Callahan's Crosstime Saloon|Callahans Crosstime Saloon]]'' series, Spider claims to be transcribing stories told to him by the narrator, Jake Stonebender. He even goes as far as writing Author's Notes and Prefaces "in character" as a Callahan's regular.
* The [[Mary Russell]]/[[Sherlock Holmes]] books by Laurie R. King contain numerous prefaces and afterwords detailing the mysterious means by which King received the manuscripts which she's been editing into the books; the narratives themselves also have occasional references to [[Arthur Conan Doyle]] as Watson's agent, including Holmes's chagrin when Conan Doyle goes public with a belief in fairies.
* [[Alexandre Dumas]] claimed to have found and elaborated upon records of ''[[The Three Musketeers (novel)|The Three Musketeers]]''.
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* The ''Chronicles Of [[Gor]]'' started this way, with the first books told in the first person of the main character, Tarl Cabot. An afterword explained that the "author", John Norman, had known Cabot, spoken with him, and then one day found the manuscript mysteriously left in his apartment.
* There is a... let's call it ''elaborate''... prologue to the ''[[The Scarlet Letter]]'' in which Nathaniel Hawthorne explains that he did not write the story of Hester Prynne; he only found it.
* [[Walter Moers]] uses this for most of his ''Zamonia'' novels. ''[[The 13½ Lives of Captain Bluebear|The Thirteen and A Half Lives of Captain Bluebear]]'' and ''[[The City of Dreaming Books]]'' are supposedly translations of autobiographies of the narrators. The setup of ''[[The Alchemaster's Apprentice|The Alchemasters Apprentice]]'' is a bit more complicated: Walter Moers supposedly translated a book written by Hildegunst von Mythenmetz, which is a retelling of a story by Gofid Letterkerl. Actually it's a retelling of ''Spiegel, das Kätzchen'' by Gottfried Keller. (Mythenmetz and Letterkerl are fictional authors, Moers and Keller are/were real people; Letterkerl's name is, in fact, [[Significant Anagram|an anagram]] of Keller's.)
* The introduction to ''[[Frankenstein (novel)|Frankenstein]]'' frames it as a letter from a sea captain to his sister after he briefly picked up the title character ([[I Am Not Shazam|and no, that's not the monster]]) in the Arctic and copied his story down. Making this even more complicated is the fact that Frankenstein quotes ''the monster'' for several chapters, and the monster also tells a story within a story within a story about the family he first sheltered with.
* [[Stephen King]]:
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* All the Cathy's _____ books are like that. Particularly in the third book when {{spoiler|Emma decides that they will publish Cathy's journal and the evidence collected as a fantasy novel.}}
* [[Robert E. Howard]] set his ''[[Conan the Barbarian]]'' stories in a "vanished age" known as the Hyborian Age that occurred before any human civilization known to modern anthropologists. The Hyborian Age itself follows the Thurian Age of King Kull.
* [[H. Rider Haggard]] used this idea in the Allan Quatermain novels (''[[King Solomon's Mines|King Solomons Mines]]'' and sequels) extensively. In ''She and Allan'' (which takes place before ''She'' and before ''Allan Quatermain'', for important reasons), Allan Quatermain writes an introduction to his memoirs of meeting Ayesha. He mentions that he will have the author publish his memoirs (the other Allan Quatermain novels follows a similar format, with some novels referring to other novels by their book titles). Quatermain mentions that he actually read Haggard's book ''She'', and notes that the claim by one of the residents of Kor in that book that no male caucasianCaucasian had visited Kor in decades stood as false, since Quatermain had visited Kor within the last fifteen years. (Curiously, Allan Quatermain died in the 1887 novel ''Allan Quatermain''—published the same year as ''She''. Quatermain must have read ''She'' not long before his death.)
* ''[[James and the Giant Peach]]'' doesn't seem like it follows this trope at first, {{spoiler|until it invokes it in the very last line in the book. We are told that James lived a happy life and grew up to become an author, and his most famous book was the true account of his adventures on the giant peach. "And that," the story concludes, "is the book you have just finished reading."}}. Another Roald Dahl book, ''[[The BFG]]'', also doesn't seem like it follows this trope at first, {{spoiler|until the end, where it's revealed that the BFG himself wrote the book about his and Sophie's adventures and published it under a pseudonym. The story concludes: "But where, you might ask, is this book that the BFG wrote? It's right here. You've just finished reading it."}}
* The epistolary novel ''[[Dangerous Liaisons|Les Liaisons Dangereuses]]'' (a.k.a. ''Dangerous Liaisons'') includes both an "Editor's Preface" claiming that these letters are real and all the author did was prune them a bit, ''and'' a "Publisher's Note" (also written by the author) expressing extreme doubt that this is really a true story, mainly because people in ''this'' day and age would ''never'' be so wicked as the characters in the book are.
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