Booking Through Thursday: Secondly

Favorite secondary characters? (Note the plural)

My immediate response is to leap to The Lord of the Rings, but that’s an ensemble piece, so there really are no secondary characters. So I think I’ll start with Mary Morstan from the Sherlock Holmes canon; I loved her from the moment I saw her in Guy Ritchie’s film adaptation, where she throws a drink in Holmes’ face because he’s being awful to her. She’s not treated too well in the stories—Doyle, uh, forgot she existed at one point?—but I still love her character. Onto Mrs. Selwyn from Evelina, a sarcastic widow whose clever cruelty can upset the young, kind heroine, even though Mrs. Selwyn protects her.  …I’m not really dredging up anyone else, because I tend to think of secondary characters in film, rather than novels, because it looks like I read a lot of ensemble pieces!