There is little scholarship that addresses fandom’s historical scope, especially the abundant evidence of fannish activity before the twentieth century. The invisibility of fandom’s history is due to a number of factors, including a scarcity of traditionally-archived sources, as well as disciplinary orientations that dismiss or minimize its usefulness or value. The latter orientation is particularly true of the field of Fandom Studies which, due to its development at a specific moment in the 1990s, became centered on a concept of contemporary ‘media fandom’, as well as specific definitions of popular culture drawn from Cultural Studies. Despite this invisibility, scholars that have investigated fandom in the past have shown the benefits of ‘historical ethnography’; the scale of fandom’s past also suggests macro-analytic approaches, which may lead to new insights across cultures and eras. Overall, research on historical fandom can generate new attention to, and revision of, fandom’s definition, as well as its historical timeline.