The oldest work of fiction is generally considered to be The Epic of Gilgamesh. But that’s an arguable case because it is mythology – did the audience at the time consider it to be fiction? How did they really feel about “hero tales” like that and the Odyssey?

A better example might be the E-dubba texts, written in Sumerian during the Old Babylonian period, which were written to be copied by scribal students as learning exercises, but were about a fictitious scribal student. These stories had a moral purpose – they were meant, in many cases, to inspire students to work hard. But they were also often humorous…and sometimes ribald in a way that would definitely have appealed to teenaged boys.

The other candidate often given is Tale of Two Brothers, a 1215 BCE Egyptian story about two brothers in conflict that might contain a grain of truth, and is generally considered folklore.

But when did we start writing and publishing fiction as an industry?