History ParentalAbandonment / Literature

* In ''{{Discworld}}'' novels, Rincewind doesn't know ''anything'' about his parents. He claims his mother ran away before he was born.

* Taken to BeyondTheImpossible levels with Rincewind in DiscWorld- his mother ran away ''before he was born!''

** ''Gates Of Sleep'', a retelling of the "SleepingBeauty" story, starts with Marina's parents agreeing to let Marina be raised by three of her godparents in secret.

* In RobertEHoward's ConanTheBarbarian story "A Witch Shall Be Born", Salome survives abandonment only to be rejected by the man who raised her for being not sufficiently interested in ThingsManWasNotMeantToKnow.

* The children in ''{{Flowers in the Attic}}'', '''LIKE WHOA'''. Not only does their father dying in a car accident set off the horrifying events to come, but they spend the rest of the book locked up in the attic of their grandparents' huge house with their mother showing less and less interest in their well-being while she attempts to reconcile with her dying father to try and get written back into his will. Meanwhile, during their confinement, their grandmother becomes more emotionally abusive towards the children because she believes them to be inherently evil. [[spoiler: They are the product of incest.]]

* The royal children of Pamela Dean's ''Secret Country'' all have {{Missing Mom}}s and distant fathers -- which proves most convenient. As does the fact that their real world alter-egos' parents are all in Australia.

** ''Three Against the Witch World'': The Tregarth siblings' MissingMom left in search of their DisappearedDad when the kids were half-grown.

* Somewhat obscure children's book ''The Divide'' has an interesting variation. Protagonist Felix is TrappedInAnotherWorld, but we ''do'' see how his parents are affected by his mysterious disappearance. They ain't happy.

* Absolutely hammered in the once-popular ante-bellum girl's series ''Elsie Dinsmore''. Elsie comes about after her father elopes with a beautiful young woman, who dies soon after her birth. The death causes her father to abandon his new daughter in his grief, so she is left with her grandparents, who vacillate between distant and abusive, who make her spend her days in the care of a tutor who also goes between distant and abusive. The only adult in Elsie's life who shows her any affection is her Mammy, but she doesn't really count, because she's not quite a person. When Elsie's father comes back when she's 8, he also ranges between distant and abusive, despite her pleas for his love and attention. Things finally come to a head where she meekly protests his plans to send her to Catholic school (because Catholics in general and nuns in particular are demons from hell), he abandons her, even giving a speech about how if she can't submit herself to his authority, she isn't fit to so much as be in the same house with him. He eventually comes back and they have a heartfelt reunion, becoming so close that she still sits on his knee and treats his word as law when she is a grandmother.
* The children in ''Flowers in the Attic'', '''LIKE WHOA'''. Not only does their father dying in a car accident set off the horrifying events to come, but they spend the rest of the book locked up in the attic of their grandparents' huge house with their mother showing less and less interest in their well-being while she attempts to reconcile with her dying father to try and get written back into his will. Meanwhile, during their confinement, their grandmother becomes more emotionally abusive towards the children because she believes them to be inherently evil. [[spoiler: They are the product of incest.]]

* Standard practice for EdgarRiceBurroughs's Green Martians. The women do not know whether their eggs were selected for hatching, and couldn't identify the fathers. JohnCarterOfMars attributes much of their harshness to this; one Green Martian raised by her mother, and knowing her father, is far more generous and gentle than her fellows.

* Taran of LloydAlexander's ''{{The Chronicles of Prydain}}'' was raised on a farm by two old guys, neither of whom are in any way relatives. In ''Taran Wanderer'' he tries to find out who his parents were, and ends up losing interest. [[EverythingsBetterWithPrincesses Princess]] Eilonwy's royal parents are dead, as is their kingdom. She has an evil aunt, however. Gurgi, meanwhile, was such an orphan that nobody was even sure what species he was.

* Standard practice for EdgarRiceBurroughs's Green Martians. The women do not know whether their eggs were selected for hatching, and couldn't identify the fathers. {{John Carter of Mars}} attributes much of their harshness to this; one Green Martian raised by her mother, and knowing her father, is far more generous and gentle than her fellows.

* RoaldDahl likes this trope. ''[[TheBFG The Big Friendly Giant]]'' stars an orphan named Sophie, ''Danny the Champion of the World'' has no mother (although she is discussed extensively), James of ''JamesAndTheGiantPeach'' is sent to live with his abusive aunts after his parents are ''eaten by a rhinoceros'', and the anonymous protagonist of ''TheWitches'' lives with his grandmother, because his parents were killed in a car accident. ''{{Matilda}}'' has parents, but they pay as little attention to her as possible; in the end she abandons ''them''.
** Averted in ''{{Charlie and the Chocolate Factory}}'', where he has both parents, and their parents are present as well. The first FilmOfTheBook plays this straight, as his father is absent.

* ''Last of the Breed'' by [[LouisLAmour Louis L'Amour]].
* AnneMcCaffrey's ''{{Dragon Riders of Pern}}'' has this with Lessa, whose entire blood line was killed by Fax about ten Turns before the start of ''Dragonflight''.

** Although Rowling kills parents and parental figures with merry abandon throughout the series, she also throws us an inversion: In ''{{Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows}}'', [[spoiler:To protect her muggle parents, Hermione ''makes'' them abandon her by judicious use of memory charms to change their identities and make them forget they ever had a daughter. The emotional toll on her is quite intense]].
*** Rowling not only admits to purposely orphaning Harry right off the bat, ("Harry had to be an orphan -- so that he's a free agent, with no fear of letting down his parents, disappointing them....") but she even cites the Potters' brutal murder happening first thing in ''{{Harry Potter and the Philosophers Stone}}'' to rebuff the argument by angry parents that her books betray their audience by getting progressively scarier.

* Many characters in Creator/JRRTolkien's ''{{The Lord of the Rings}}'' and ''{{Silmarillion}}'' lost either one or both parents at an early age: Frodo (both his parents died in a boating accident), Aragorn (his father died when he was two), Turin (his mother sent him away shortly after his father was captured by Morgoth), Elrond and Elros (after they were captured in battle, their parents believed them dead and sailed away to obtain divine help) etc.

* Very, very common in the works of DianaWynneJones: in the ''{{Chrestomanci}}'' books, Cat and Gwendolyn's parents are dead, Christopher's tend to ignore him, Conrad's mother is too busy writing to pay attention, and half the children in ''Witch Week'' have had one or both parents executed (and those that haven't have been sent away to boarding school because they are 'problem children'). In the ''[[TheDalemarkQuartet Dalemark]]'' books, Tanaqui and her siblings are left to fend for themselves, as are the children in ''Cart and Cwidder''. Luke in ''{{Eight Days of Luke}}'' is brought up by distant relatives, Mig's father in ''BlackMaria'' has [[spoiler: apparently]] been murdered, Polly's parents in ''FireAndHemlock'' divorce and toss her around between them until her grandmother takes her in, Kathleen in ''{{Dogsbody}}'' is living with her aunt because her father is in prison and Hailey's parents in ''The Game'' are presumed dead. Maree and Nick in ''[[TheMagids Deep Secret]]'' are [[spoiler: half-siblings and children of the Emperor, but both are brought up away from him, as are all his children. Nick lives with his real mother, but she is killed at the end of the book, leaving him with his (thankfully not at all wicked) stepfather]], and Abdullah in ''Literature/{{Castle in the Air}}'' dislikes his family and daydreams about finding that he is not really their child. This tendency becomes a little unnerving once you learn how neglectful Diana Wynne Jones' parents were - the family in ''{{The Time of the Ghost}}'' is closely based on her own.

* In the ''{{Wheel of Time}}'' series, Rand's mother died when he was very young, leaving his father to raise him on his own. [[spoiler:In reality neither Tam nor Kari are his parents; his father was an Aiel and his mother was daughter-heir to the throne of Andor before running away to become a Maiden of the Spear. She died on Dragonmount shortly after his birth (thus setting the entire series in motion) and his father went to the Blight to fight and die to the Shadow after hearing of her death.]]

* In GeneStrattonPorter's ''{{Literature/Freckles}}'', Freckles was a DoorstopBaby -- and was seriously injured at the time. He is deeply distressed by the thought he might come from a terrible family.

* Pretty much every AnthonyHorowitz series uses it, including ''Literature/AlexRider'', the ''Diamond Brothers'' series, the first 4 Gatekeepers in the ''Power of Five'' series, and the protagonist of ''The Devil and his Boy''.

*** Slightly subverted here. Yes her widowed father dies, but she meets her maternal grandmother for the first time in years and later finds out she has an entire clan of horse nomads for cousins.

** And also F'lar and F'nor, who lost their father in a duel at a very young age. Of course, since Weyr children are fostered anyway, this might not apply.

* Lyra Belacqua from PhilipPullman's ''HisDarkMaterials'' starts off the series being raised (for a given value of the term) by the faculty and staff of an Oxford ''college''[[spoiler: , believing herself to be an orphan whose parents died in an airship crash. Turns out, of course, that they're both alive -- her father is the man she'd been raised believing was her uncle, her mother is her malign FairyGodmother equivalent -- and they had a fairly solid reason for giving her up: not only was she conceived in adultery, her father had gone on to kill her mother's husband in a duel.]]

* ''ASeriesOfUnfortunateEvents'' by LemonySnicket. Heck, the poor Baudelaires lose or are let down by about one parental figure per book for most of the series.

* Bobby's entire family disappears in the first ''{{Pendragon}}'' book, and the only explanation given by Bobby's new father figure, Uncle Press, is that Bobby will see them again. The other Travelers with mentioned parents were raised by the generation of Travelers before them, who generally die somewhere in the series. An exception is Spader's mother, who disappears the same way Bobby's family did. Heck, [[spoiler: uncle Press]] kicks the bucket in ''The Lost City of Faar''. [[spoiler: However, he does come back in the last chapter of Raven Rise.]] Also in Raven Rise, [[spoiler: several of the Travelers, who Bobby thinks of as his brothers or family, die. And then come back at the end magically along with Press. Mark and Courtney are assumed dead, though they turn out to be alive in the final book.]]

* In the ''{{Wheel of Time}}'' series, Rand's mother died when he was very young, leaving his father to raise him on his own. [[spoiler:Of course, in reality neither Tam nor Kari are his parents; his father was an Aiel and his mother was daughter-heir to the throne of Andor before running away to become a Maiden of the Spear. She died on Dragonmount shortly after his birth (thus setting the entire series in motion) and his father went to the Blight to fight and die to the Shadow after hearing of her death.]]

* Absolutely hammered in the once-popular ante-bellum girl's series ''Elsie Dinsmore''. Elsie comes about after her father elopes with a beautiful young woman, who dies soon after her birth. The death causes her father to abandon his new daughter in his grief, so she is left with her grandparents, who vacillate between distant and abusive, who make her spend her days in the care of a tutor who also goes between distant and abusive. The only adult in Elsie's life who shows her any affection is her Mammy, but she doesn't really count, because she's not quite a person. When Elsie's father comes back when she's 8, he also ranges between distant and abusive, despite her pleas for his love and attention. Things finally come to a head where she meekly protests his plans to send her to Catholic school (because Catholics in general and nuns in particular are demons from hell), he literally abandons her, even giving a speech about how if she can't submit herself to his authority, she isn't fit to so much as be in the same house with him. He eventually comes back and they have a heartfelt reunion, becoming so close that she still sits on his knee and treats his word as law when she is a grandmother.

** [[TortallUniverse Alanna]]: Mother dead, father emotionally distant - we see him on the first page and ''never again'' throughout the series - and later dead.

* In ''CodexAlera'', Jim Butcher's other series, the protagonist Tavi is an orphan raised by his aunt Isana and uncle Bernard. Tavi assumes that he was illegitimate and that his father was a soldier killed in a famous battle around the time he was born. [[spoiler: In fact, Isana herself is his mother and was married, but she kept it a secret that Tavi was her son because Tavi's father was the prince and heir to the throne and had been assassinated.]]
** Kitai, the Marat ambassador, also has abandonment issues, but for more normal reasons: her mother died when she was young.

* Appears a lot in PGWodehouse books. [[Literature/JeevesAndWooster Bertie]] is an orphan who seems to have been largely raised by his aunts, and many of his friends seem to be in a similar situation. [[spoiler:Literature/{{Psmith}}'s father apparently died between books, leaving quite a few characters in the lurch financially speaking.]] Because it's Wodehouse, it's never really made angsty, though.

* In ''[[Literature/TheEdge On the Edge]]'', the Draytons' mother first goes mad with grief and sleeps around indiscriminately, slowly dying inside. Then she finally does die. Later the Draytons' father runs off to hunt treasure, and when the novel opens he's been gone for several years with no word. Fortunately, [[PromotionToParent Rose is old enough]] to raise her younger brothers on her own.

* Sol's dad from ''{{Warrior Cats}}'': ''Beyond The Code is revealed to have abandoned Sol and his littermates and mom. Sol's father was revealed to not like his kits or his mate, Cinders, at all. Then he comes by later and [[spoiler:shamelessly tells Cinders he cheated on her, saying he found a mate who wouldn't complain as much as her]].

* Bobby's entire family disappears in the first ''{{Pendragon}}'' book, and the only explanation given by Bobby's new father figure, Uncle Press, is that Bobby will see them again. The other Travelers with mentioned parents were raised by the generation of Travelers before them, who generally die somewhere in the series. An exception is Spader's mother, who disappears the same way Bobby's family did. Heck, [[spoiler: uncle Press]] kicks the bucket in ''The Lost City of Faar''. [[spoiler: However, he does come back in the last chapter of Raven Rise.]] Also in Raven Rise, [[spoiler: several of the Travelers, who Bobby thinks of as his brothers or family, die. And then come back at the end magically along with Press. Mark and Courtney are assumed dead, and are killed off for real because they're only human.]]

* Many characters in {{Tolkien}}'s ''{{The Lord of the Rings}}'' and ''{{Silmarillion}}'' lost either one or both parents at an early age: Frodo (both his parents died in a boating accident), Aragorn (his father died when he was two), Turin (his mother sent him away shortly after his father was captured by Morgoth), Elrond and Elros (after they were captured in battle, their parents believed them dead and sailed away to obtain divine help) etc.

* In JohnCWright's ''The Orphans of Chaos'', the title orphans never knew their parents. [[spoiler: All of whom are, in fact, alive, but had to surrender their children as hostages to the [[GreekMythology Olympians]].]]

* In GeneStrattonPorter's ''Freckles'', Freckles was a DoorstopBaby -- and was seriously injured at the time. He is deeply distressed by the thought he might come from a terrible family.

* In GeneStrattonPorter's ''Michael O'Halloran'', Mickey's father died of drink, and then his mother, with no cause given.

* In JaneAusten's ''{{Persuasion}}'', it is casually mentioned that the reason that Captain Wentworth had stayed at his brother's and so originally met Anne was that his parents were dead.

** ''Phoenix and Ashes'': Since this is a WorldWarI version of ''{{Cinderella}}'', this is a JustifiedTrope; the story opens when the now-orphaned protagonist learns of the death of her father, who was set up by her stepmother.
** ''Serpent's Shadow'': A TwiceTold version of SnowWhite, in which the death of the protagonist's magician mother quickly led to the death of her father (since she had concealed him from a common enemy who objected to their marriage). The story opens after the protagonist has relocated to VictorianLondon in the hopes of escaping her family's enemy.

** ''Gates Of Sleep'', a retelling of the SleepingBeauty story, starts with Marina's parents agreeing to let Marina be raised by three of her godparents in secret.

** [[ButtMonkey Neville]] [[CrouchingMoronHiddenBadass Longbottom's]] parents didn't die either, but as one character puts it, "Better dead than what happened to them..." as they were [[spoiler:tortured into permanent insanity by Death Eaters using the Cruciatus curse, and they don't recognise their son when he comes to visit]]. This is why he's raised by his domineering grandmother, who, on her first appearance, seems disapointed that Neville didn't turn out more like his dad.
** Sirius Black was disowned by his EvilMatriarch mother when he was sixteen after he got sick of her FantasticRacism and moved in with James.

* Very, very common in the works of DianaWynneJones: in the ''{{Chrestomanci}}'' books, Cat and Gwendolyn's parents are dead, Christopher's tend to ignore him, Conrad's mother is too busy writing to pay attention, and half the children in ''Witch Week'' have had one or both parents executed (and those that haven't have been sent away to boarding school because they are 'problem children'). In the ''[[TheDalemarkQuartet Dalemark]]'' books, Tanaqui and her siblings are left to fend for themselves, as are the children in ''Cart and Cwidder''. Luke in ''{{Eight Days of Luke}}'' is brought up by distant relatives, Mig's father in ''BlackMaria'' has [[spoiler: apparently]] been murdered, Polly's parents in ''FireAndHemlock'' divorce and toss her around between them until her grandmother takes her in, Kathleen in ''{{Dogsbody}}'' is living with her aunt because her father is in prison and Hailey's parents in ''The Game'' are presumed dead. Maree and Nick in ''[[TheMagids Deep Secret]]'' are [[spoiler: half-siblings and children of the Emperor, but both are brought up away from him, as are all his children. Nick lives with his real mother, but she is killed at the end of the book, leaving him with his (thankfully not at all wicked) stepfather]], and Abdullah in ''[[Literature/HowlsMovingCastle Castle in the Air]]'' dislikes his family and daydreams about finding that he is not really their child. This tendency becomes a little unnerving once you learn how neglectful Diana Wynne Jones' parents were - the family in ''{{The Time of the Ghost}}'' is closely based on her own.

* Appears a lot in [[PGWodehouse Wodehouse]] books. [[Literature/JeevesAndWooster Bertie]] is an orphan who seems to have been largely raised by his aunts, and many of his friends seem to be in a similar situation. [[spoiler: Psmith's father apparently died between books, leaving quite a few characters in the lurch financially speaking.]] Because it's Wodehouse, it's never really made angsty, though.

* Appears a lot in [[PGWodehouse Wodehouse]] books. [[JeevesAndWooster Bertie]] is an orphan who seems to have been largely raised by his aunts, and many of his friends seem to be in a similar situation. [[spoiler: Psmith's father apparently died between books, leaving quite a few characters in the lurch financially speaking.]] Because it's Wodehouse, it's never really made angsty, though.

** [[CircleOfMagic Daja]]: Entire family on a ship that got torn apart; she was the only survivor and to make matters worse, she was declared [[{{Unperson}} trangshi]] by her ''entire race.''

* Parents are not mentioned very much in ''The War Between the Pitiful Teachers and the Splendid Kids'', seeing as the characters are in a prison-like school for bad teachers and smartasses. The lone(?) exception is Big Alice Eyesore, who was so wild as an ''infant'' (her teeth came in early; they were all canines) that her ''child psychologist'' parents left her in a wild animal park where she was raised by hyenas. They came back for her when she was an adolescent, but after learning that child psychology doesn't work on hyenas they abandoned her for good.

* ''{{Animorphs}}'' features Tobias, who from the get-go is described as the abandoned child. His mother ran away and he never knew his father, though we do later find out that his father is actually [[spoiler: Elfangor]]. Other than that, Marco also lacks a mother figure, as she apparently died a few years ago (though it turns out that [[spoiler: she is Visser One's host]]). Jake also loses his parents when they [[spoiler: become Controllers]] near the end of the series. On the flip side, some of the other members of the Animorphs force their parents to abandon them (similar to Hermione in ''Harry Potter'' above) to protect them from the Yeerks.

* Very, very common in the works of DianaWynneJones: in the ''{{Chrestomanci}}'' books, Cat and Gwendonlyn's parents are dead, Christopher's tend to ignore him, Conrad's mother is too busy writing to pay attention, and half the children in ''Witch Week'' have had one or both parents executed (and those that haven't have been sent away to boarding school because they are 'problem children'). In the ''[[TheDalemarkQuartet Dalemark]]'' books, Tanaqui and her siblings are left to fend for themselves, as are the children in ''Cart and Cwidder''. Luke in ''{{Eight Days of Luke}}'' is brought up by distant relatives, Mig's father in ''BlackMaria'' has [[spoiler: apparently]] been murdered, Polly's parents in ''Fire and Hemlock'' divorce and toss her around between them until her grandmother takes her in, Kathleen in ''{{Dogsbody}}'' is living with her aunt because her father is in prison and Hailey's parents in ''The Game'' are presumed dead. Maree and Nick in ''[[TheMagids Deep Secret]]'' are [[spoiler: half-siblings and children of the Emperor, but both are brought up away from him, as are all his children. Nick lives with his real mother, but she is killed at the end of the book, leaving him with his (thankfully not at all wicked) stepfather]], and Abdullah in ''[[{{Castle}} Castle in the Air]]'' dislikes his family and daydreams about finding that he is not really their child. This tendency becomes a little unnerving once you learn how neglectful Diana Wynne Jones' parents were - the family in ''{{The Time of the Ghost}}'' is closely based on her own.

* Pretty much every AnthonyHorowitz series uses it, including ''AlexRider'', the ''Diamond Brothers'' series, the first 4 Gatekeepers in the ''Power of Five'' series, and the protagonist of ''The Devil and his Boy''.