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== Literature ==
* ''[[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 [[CS Lewis (Creator)|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 unkown but could be explained by him being an [[Undead Author]], though, given the Wood Between the Worlds from [[The Magicians 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 [
** Speaking of [[The Magicians 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 [[CS Lewis (Creator)|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]] [[JRR Tolkien (Creator)|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.
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** Everything by [[Daniel Defoe]],
** Samuel Richardson's ''Pamela'' and ''Clarissa'',
** Jonathan Swift's ''[[
** Lawrence Sterne's ''[[Tristram Shandy (Literature)|Tristram Shandy]]'' -- which is also the longest sustained attempt at subverting the trope.
* [[Isaac 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|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 (Literature)|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 ''[[
* 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 (Creator)|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 (Literature)|The Three Musketeers]]''.
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* [[Les Luthiers]] periodically "discover" and perform music by the fictitious composer Johann Sebastian Mastropiero.
* According to the official biography ''Rise of the Ogre'', [[Gorillaz (Music)|Gorillaz]]'s creators Jamie Hewlett (cartoonist) and Damon Albarn (voice actor) are, in-universe, the band's director and producer, respectively.
* An important part of the [
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[[Category:Older Than Print]]
[[Category:Direct Line To The Author]]
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