This is a list of fictional stories in which illegitimacy features as an important plot element. Passing mentions are omitted from this article. Many of these stories explore the social pain and exclusion felt by illegitimate "natural children".
Illegitimacy was a common theme in Victorian literature. "Illegitimacy was a popular subject for Victorian writers, not only because of its value as a plot device, but also because of the changing laws affecting illegitimate children and their parents which kept the topic in the public eye.""Representations of illegitimacy in Wilkie Collins's early novels", Philological Quarterly, 22 March 2004.
Written works Pre-Victorian
Geoffrey of Monmouth, The History of the Kings of Britain (c. 1136 prose history): Much attention is focused on the disputable bastardy of King Arthur, as well as the illegitimate origins of the wizard Merlin. Sir Thomas Malory, Le Morte d'Arthur (1485 prose romance): King Arthur is conceived illegitimately when his father Uther Pendragon utilizes Merlin's magic to seduce Igraine, a noblewoman married to Duke Gorlois. Later, Arthur unwittingly begets a bastard son, Mordred, on his own half-sister Morgause. At Arthur's court, Mordred and his half-brother Agravain incite growing discontent about the Queen's adulterous relations with Sir Lancelot, and a civil war ensues. While Arthur is preoccupied fighting Lancelot, Mordred spreads word that Arthur has been killed, seizes the crown for himself, and attempts to seduce the queen. She resists, and Arthur quickly returns, attacking and defeating his son's armies. Mordred dies in combat, and Arthur is fatally wounded and dies shortly thereafter with his kingdom in ruins. William Shakespeare: Richard III (1591 play): Richard, Duke of Gloucester, usurps the English throne, justifying the coup by claiming that the young nephew he deposed, King Edward V, and his younger brother, the Duke of York, are both illegitimate, as their father (Edward IV) was promised in marriage to another woman when he wedded their mother. King John (1595? play): Philip Falconbridge, bastard son of Richard the Lionheart, helps save England from ruin at the hands of Richard's incompetent younger brother, John of England. Much Ado About Nothing (1598 play): The envious and melancholy villain of the comedy, Don John, is a bastard, and invents schemes to thwart the marriage of his legitimate brother's close friends. King Lear (1605 play): Edmund, bastard son of the Earl of Gloucester, first cheats his legitimate brother Edgar of his lands, then stands by while his father is declared a traitor, blinded, and sent to wander in the wilderness. Edmund finally makes an attempt on the English crown itself by bedding Lear's two daughters Regan and Goneril. The Tempest (1611 play): Caliban, a savage, deformed slave of the play's protagonist, Prospero, is the offspring of a witch and a sea demon. Thomas Middleton, The Revenger's Tragedy (1607 play): In addition to cuckolding his father and plotting against his legitimate brother, the Duke's bastard son, Spurio, also becomes heavily embroiled in the Revenger's plot to undo the Duke and the rest of his family. Philip Massinger, The Maid of Honour (1632 play): a king removes his troublesome illegitimate brother from court by sending him off on a secret military campaign. Benjamin Franklin, "The Speech of Polly Baker" (1747 story): a woman is put on trial for having an illegitimate child. She had been convicted four times in the past for this same crime. Each time, she said, the full blame was placed on her shoulders but not the father's. Henry Fielding, The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling (1749 novel): Tom, the bastard infant of a country girl, is left in an anonymous bundle to the care of the rich and kind-hearted Mr. Allworthy. Mr. Allworthy raises Tom, who grows up and has a number of adventures over the book's thousand-plus pages. Voltaire, Candide (1759 satirical novella): The hero Candide, in the opening of chapter 1, is "suspected [to be] the son of the Baron's sister by a respectable, honest gentleman of the neighborhood, whom she had refused to marry because he could prove only seventy-one quarterings, the rest of his family tree having been lost in the passage of time."Voltaire, Candide, or Optimism: A Fresh Translation, Backgrounds, Criticism, translated and edited by Robert M. Adams, 2nd ed., New York, W.W. Norton & Company, 1991, , p. 1. Jane Austen: Sense and Sensibility (1811 novel): Colonel Brandon's ward Miss Williams is suspected to be his illegitimate daughter but it is revealed that she in fact the illegitimate daughter of his first love Eliza, who had been forced to marry his brother and was later divorced by her husband for infidelity. She leaves her daughter, also Eliza, to his care. On a visit to Bath, she is seduced by Willoughby who has abandoned her prior to his meeting Marianne. She in turn gives birth to an illegitimate child. When Willoughby's aunt discovers the affair, she disowns him, leading him to forsake Marianne whom he truly loves and marry an heiress for her fortune. Emma (1815 novel): Harriet Smith, a young woman who attends a local school, is described as the "natural daughter of somebody" ("natural" in this sense meaning illegitimate). She is befriended by Emma Woodhouse, who imagines that Harriet is the child of a wealthy gentleman and introduces her to the local vicar, Mr. Elton, who she thinks is a good match. Elton, however, sees Harriet as far below him socially, and instead woos the unsuspecting Emma. It is revealed later in the novel that Harriet is the child of a prosperous tradesman. Alexandre Dumas, père (who fathered several illegitimate children, including Alexandre Dumas, fils), Antony (1831 play): a defense of adultery and illegitimacy.Tad Szulc, Chopin in Paris, p. 161.
Victorian
Charles Dickens: nearly half of his 14 finished novels include illegitimate individuals: Oliver Twist (Oliver), 1839; Barnaby Rudge (Hugh the Ostler), 1841; Dombey and Son (Alice Brown), 1848; Bleak House (1853 social novel): illegitimacy (heroine Esther Summerson's) is one of the social questions addressed, making Esther the novel's moral heart despite her illegitimacy.Michael Gorra writes: "Esther Summerson is an illegitimate child. She lives under an alias and is told by an aunt that she has inherited her unknown mother's shame. Later we learn that she has also gotten her mother's beauty, the beauty of a woman who has schooled herself into a frightening hauteur and is now known as Lady Dedlock." Michael Gorra, "Being Dickens" (review of Robert Douglas-Fairhurst, The Turning Point: 1851—A Year That Changed Charles Dickens and the World, Knopf, 2022, 357 pp.), The New York Review of Books, vol. LXIX, no. 7 (21 April 2022), pp. 50, 54–55. (quotation, pp. 54–55. Little Dorrit (Arthur Clennam), 1857; Great Expectations (Estella), 1861. Alexander Herzen, Who is to Blame? (1847 novel): Krutsifersky is the tutor of Lyubonka, an illegitimate daughter of the retired general, Negrov. Upon forming an emotional attachment to Lyubonka, Krutsifersky is allowed to marry her. The emphasis given to Lyubonka's illegitimacy was of personal concern to Herzen, who was himself illegitimate.Charles A. Moser, The Cambridge History of Russian Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992) pp. 229–230. Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter (1850 novel): Hester Prynne gives birth after committing adultery, refuses to name the father, and is cast out of Puritan society. William Makepeace Thackeray, The History of Henry Esmond (1852 historical novel): supposed illegitimate protagonist, who finally receives documents proving his legitimacy but destroys them in order not to injure the heirs to his property. Set during the English Restoration. Elizabeth Gaskell, Ruth (1853 social novel): a compassionate portrayal of an orphaned young seamstress, Ruth Hilton, who is seduced, impregnated and abandoned by gentleman Henry Bellingham. Wilkie Collins had concurrent domestic relationships with two women, who knew about each other.Robert Gottlieb, "'Make 'Em Cry, Make 'Em Laugh, Make 'Em Wait'", The New York Review of Books, vol. LXIV, no. 10 (8 June 2017), pp. 25–28. "For Collins, the theme of illegitimacy was more than just a plot mechanism: through his fiction he continually questioned society's condemnation of the unmarried mother and her child.""Representations of illegitimacy in Wilkie Collins's early novels", Philological Quarterly, 22 March 2004. Hide and Seek (1854), about the parentage of a deaf and dumb girl "Madonna" adopted by an artist and his wife. The Dead Secret (1857 novel), concerns the unexpected discovery of a character's illegitimacy and the resulting moral dilemmas that face the character. The Woman in White (1859), centred on illegitimacy, and the lengths that one of the main characters, the illegitimate Sir Percival Glyde, goes to conceal it. (See also Wilkie Collins' The Woman in White in "Look-alike: Literature".) No Name (1862). Two sisters are disinherited when their parents' death reveals them to be bastards; one accepts her reduced circumstances, but the other plots revenge. Alexandre Dumas, fils (illegitimate son of Alexandre Dumas, père), in his play The Illegitimate Son (1858), espoused the belief that if a man fathers an illegitimate child, then he has an obligation to legitimize the child and marry the woman. Anthony Trollope: Doctor Thorne (1858 novel): two sets of country gentlefolk fallen on hard times are especially proud of their "pure blood", but the well-meaning doctor brings up his illegitimate niece as a lady and then discovers that there is no place for her in their social world. Ralph the Heir (1871 novel): The estate of Newton Priory is entailed upon the legitimate heir, nephew of the current Squire; the Squire tries to buy the reversion from the spendthrift, debt-ridden heir so that the Squire can leave it by will to his illegitimate son. Lady Anna (1874 novel): The vicious Earl Lovel has told his wife that their marriage was invalid; during the two decades that she has struggled to prove its validity, their daughter Anna has grown up with her legitimacy in question. He dies intestate, and the disposal of his large fortune depends on her status. George Eliot: Adam Bede (1859 novel): Hetty is seduced by a young officer who abandons her; she then abandons her baby in a field where it dies, and is tried for its murder. Daniel Deronda (1876 novel): Gwendolen Harleth discovers that her suitor Henleigh Grandcourt has four illegitimate children with an ex-mistress. She initially spurns him but later marries him when her family is ruined. Also, the other protagonist, Daniel, suspects (albeit mistakenly) that he might be the illegitimate son of his guardian Sir Hugo Mallinger. Victor Hugo, Les Misérables (1862 novel): Cosette is the illegitimate daughter of Fantine and Felix Tholomyes. After Tholomyes abandons Fantine and Cosette, Fantine entrusts Cosette to the care of the Thénardiers (who secretly force her to work as a scullery maid) and pays them for Cosette's care. After Fantine dies of tuberculosis, Jean Valjean rears Cosette; when she grows up, she falls in love with Marius Pontmercy, whom Jean Valjean saves when an insurrection is crushed. Leo Tolstoy: War and Peace (1869 novel): one of the principal protagonists, Pierre Bezukhov, is an illegitimate child of a dying father who has many other illegitimate children. Pierre is chosen to inherit his father's fortune and title of Count Bezukhov. Anna Karenina (1877 novel): Anna has an affair with Count Aleksei Vronsky, which leads to an illegitimate daughter, whom she names Annie. This incident drives the rest of the plot towards its tragic conclusion. Thomas Hardy: