History
Though the word "prequel" is of recent origin, works fitting this concept existed long before. The Cypria, presupposing hearers' acquaintance with the events of the Homeric epic, confined itself to what preceded the Iliad, and thus formed a kind of introduction.
According to the Oxford English Dictionary the word "prequel" first appeared in print in 1958 in an article by Anthony Boucher in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, used to describe James Blish's novel They Shall Have Stars. The term came into general usage in the 1970s and 80s.
Butch and Sundance: The Early Days (1979) may have inaugurated the term "prequel" into the mainstream. The term has since been popularized by the Star Wars prequel trilogy (1999-2005).
Read more about this topic: Prequel
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