In modernism, invisible characters relate to two major cultural processes: on the one hand, representations of the in/visible subject diversify, as invisibility narratives come to deal with social invisibilisation based on class, gender, and race; on the other hand, invisibility also characterises the modernist position of the author as impersonal. The notion of the invisible author as impersonal, divine, and male is a strong concept in contrast to the modernist weakness of ideas of character. Originated in Gustave Flaubert, developed in James Joyce, and critiqued by Christine Brooke-Rose, this concept of the invisible author is an embodiment of hegemonic invisibility. The invisible author is modified, however, in three central texts that also address social invisibility: G. K. Chesterton’s “The Invisible Man” (1911) uses popular literature to formulate a critique in terms of class. Then, Virginia Woolf, in her novels of the mid-1920s, analyses the perspectival interplay that makes older women invisible. Finally, Ellison’s idea of “un-visible” people establishes the most influential model of liminal invisibility, capturing the surreal sense of how invisibility narratives are closer to the reality of social invisibility when they embrace non-realist genres. Stemming from a critique of the hegemonic invisible author, the social diversification of invisible characters in modernism paves the way for today’s emancipatory invisibility narratives that focus on the attainment of visibility.