Category: films

I like to think my personality is more than a collection of English student stereotypes, but when it comes to Jane Austen adaptations, I’m not ashamed to say I’m an absolute sucker. To that end, it was only natural that when doing a module on Jane Austen in university last year, I decided to examine the enduring popularity of the Jane Austen adaptations that I and so many others devour and question their effect on the legacy of Austen’s work. I decided to share that essay here!

A quick google search for “most famous english writers” will yield a pantheon of literature’s greatest hits, topped by William Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, and Jane Austen. The two men have in common long, illustrious careers characterised by incredible breadth of range. Next to them, Austen seems a curious inclusion, her six completed novels and relatively short career making her seem almost an interloper by comparison. And yet there has never in living memory been any doubt cast upon Austen’s position as one of the “greats.” What is perhaps most striking is that her popularity stretches both to the realms of academia and literary criticism, and to that of popular enjoyment — Austen quotes printed on an assortment of mugs and t-shirts and tote bags are ever-popular souvenirs, and Cassandra Austen’s portrait of her sister is now as recognisable an image as the etching of Shakespeare that graces the first folio.