Did fan fiction really start with Sherlock Holmes in the 1800s?

The answer

Fan fiction's origins trace to Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories. When Doyle killed Holmes in 'The Final Problem' (1893), devastated fans began writing their own unauthorized Holmes stories, some published in magazines. This 'Great Hiatus' fan activity was so intense that Doyle eventually resurrected Holmes in 1903. However, organized fan fiction as we know it began with Star Trek fanzines in the late 1960s and 1970s, where fans wrote and distributed mimeographed stories at conventions. The term 'slash fiction' originated from Kirk/Spock stories (the '/' denoting a romantic pairing). The internet transformed fan fiction: FanFiction.net launched in 1998, and Archive of Our Own (AO3), which launched in 2009, now hosts over 12 million works. AO3 won a Hugo Award in 2019. Notably, Fifty Shades of Grey began as Twilight fan fiction, later selling over 150 million copies.