Top Ten Tuesday: Literature's Also-Rans, Sidekicks, and Otherwise Overlooked Characters

This week's Top Ten Tuesday list, sponsored by The Broke and the Bookish, is a particularly fun one: minor characters.

1. Tom Bombadil from The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien.  No, he's not fully drawn, but with his minor appearances there's no real reason for him to be.  But in the few sketches that Tolkien gives us, I'm quite taken with him--a character both entirely dwelling in the natural world, yet seemingly not of the world. 

2. Severus Snape from the Harry Potter series by J. K. Rowling.  It's true that I like him better in fan fiction than in canon, but I think Snape is the most interesting and complicated character in the series, not to mention a pivotal player whose unpleasantness overshadows his importance. 

Had to leave this image larger 'cause it's so cool!

3. Poppet and Widget, the Murray twins from The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern.  In all fairness, this book probably doesn't belong here since it's not published for another four months, but I just finished reading it this morning and it's fresh in my mind.  These twins are great--wise beyond their years and yet never without their belief in the impossible.

4. Mr. & Mrs. Gardiner from Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. Can you imagine how differently Jane and Elizabeth Bennet's lives would have turned out with the Gardiners for parents? 

5. Mr. Collins from Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. Was ever a better fool created in all of literature?  If so, I've not encountered him yet.  (This book is also fresh in my head because I'm reading P&P on my phone right now, just a few pages a day whenever I find myself waiting in line.)

6. Almost anybody from my childhood favorite author of L. M. Montgomery, author of the Anne series and Emily series. Matthew, Marilla, Davy, Rachel Lynde, and Katherine from the former.  The Aunts Laura, Elizabeth & Ruth,  Cousin Jimmy, Dean from the latter.

7. Alfred Ludlow from "The Legends of the Fall" by Jim Harrison. Ach, but the man breaks my heart.  Trying so hard to always do the right thing, and always losing despite his honorable intentions and guileless enough not to realize he doesn't belong in politics.

8. Dogberry from Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare.  Wow, not many lines and yet ye somehow manages to mangle them all.  Comparisons are odorous, indeed!

9. The entire cast of characters from The Tower, the Zoo and the Tortoise by Julia Stuart. It's really an ensemble cast, but if I had to choose beyond Balthazar & Hebe Jones, arguably the two main characters, I might go with the Reverend Septimus Drew, who is chaplain of the Tower but who moonlights as both a rat exterminator AND a writer of women's erotica.

10.  Once again, a list that I thought would be easy to compile is leaving me stumped.  So I'll leave it blank for you to tell me your favorite minor character(s).