Jane Austen's Books & Adaptations discussion

There are lots of non-fiction books and documentaries on Jane Austen adaptations available online. Some good, some bad and some in between.

Here's the place to share the links and maybe a short summaries or reviews so people know what to expect. :)


Documentaries on movie and TV adaptations:

💡 Making of Sense & Sensibility (1995 Documentary, YouTube link)

Lectures and Debates on movie and TV adaptations:


💡 Adapting Jane Austen with Andrew Davies:
https://youtu.be/HkcFIddpCRc (Chapman University lecture)
💡 Adapting Jane Austen with Whit Stillman:
https://youtu.be/htKg83SBf58 (Hillsdale College lecture)
💡 Jane Austen on Film with James Bowman:
https://youtu.be/sotG7806a7Y (Hillsdale College lecture)
💡 Frock Flicks & the Bill and Ted Test: Austen-Era Fashion in History vs. Hollywood:
https://youtu.be/QYs9lkrVDeQ (Zoom chat of costume experts)

Non-Fiction:

Making of 1995 Sense & Sensibility Movie documentary. link

I really enjoyed it. Lots of interesting pieces of information on the director Ang Lee and Emma Thompson adapting of the novel (that part starts at about 29:25 of the documentary). Plus it's always fun to hear what actors make of the characters they portray.

This movie was really successful - was nominated at the Oscars for Best Picture and won for Best Adapted Screenplay - a deserved win for Emma Thompson IMO.

Adapting Jane Austen with Andrew Davies:
https://youtu.be/HkcFIddpCRc

"Andrew Davies, writer of "Pride and Prejudice" and "Sense and Sensibility" for television, shares inside stories about about adapting Jane Austen during a visit to Chapman University in Orange, CA. While he was in Southern California, Mr. Davies addressed the Jane Austen Society of North America's Southwest Meeting. This talk is part of the JASNA event. Mr. Davies is a writer of "Mr. Selfridge" and "House of Cards" for television."

Andrew Davies' lecture is a hoot. He's a "dirty old man" and totally unapologetic about it. He talked in front of a room full of adult mostly middle-aged women (and a handful of men) and he addressed various issues of adapting Jane Austen's novels including how he interprets the issues of sex, sexuality and sexual attraction in those books. While shocking to some, people in Regency era had sex and Jane Austen was aware of it. ;) It was fun. He talked in turn about all his 4 major Austen adaptations. Added a couple of really funny anecdotes. I loved the one about the "bean baby & Mark Strong". You're in for a treat.

His JA adaptations:
1995 Pride & Prejudice (Colin Firth)
1996 Emma (Kate Beckinsale)
2007 Northanger Abbey (Felicity Jones)
2008 Sense and Sensibility (Hattie Morahan, Charity Wakefield)

Adapting Jane Austen with Whit Stillman:
https://youtu.be/htKg83SBf58

Whit Stillman - Film Director

His lecture on adapting Mansfield Park and Lady Susan. At the beginning he talks about adaptations in general and James Bond adaptations in particular, about indie movie making, the hardships of finding financial backing. It was interesting enough.

His JA Adaptations:
1990 Metropolitan (losely inspired by Mansfield Park)
2016 Love & Friendship (adaptation of Lady Susan)

Jane Austen on Film with James Bowman:
https://youtu.be/sotG7806a7Y

James Bowman - Film Critic and Author; his lecture at Hillsdale College
on Jane Austen's moralism in her books and adaptations.

I don't agree with some of his opinions on JA works - esp him totally dismissing the social satire aspect of her books in favor of "propagation of morality". Not to mention his unwarranted commentary on political issues of today. But overall it was an interesting lecture and I am glad I watched it.

Frock Flicks & the Bill and Ted Test: Austen-Era Fashion in History vs. Hollywood: 8/15/21
https://youtu.be/QYs9lkrVDeQ

"Clothing in film adaptations of Jane Austen’s works really runs the gamut—from truly awful to absolutely spot-on. In this lively discussion, our panel of costume experts examines it all. With an eye toward historic accuracy as well as character-appropriate choices, we ask--Who got it right? Who got it wrong? And what happened to all the hairpins?

Featuring Trystan L. Bass (Frock Flicks), Hilary Davidson (Dress in the Age of Jane Austen: Regency Fashion; @BillAndTedTest), Sarah Lorraine (Frock Flicks), and Kendra Van Cleave (Frock Flicks; Démodé Couture; 18th Century Hair & Wig Styling: History & Step-by-Step Techniques) with moderator Laura Whitlock (Laura Whitlock Millinery)."

Mostly a funny zoom chat, not very focused, mostly throwing shade on bad adaptations. It's fun to listen to if not heavy on new information.

I'm listening to Alexa Donne's Jane Austen Summer Watchathon 2020 on YouTube. She made a 1h30 min+ episodes of discussions/debates with fellow JA fanfiction/sequels/retellings authors, each episode dedicated to period movies/TV adaptations of one of JA novels.

So far I've watched Emma and Mansfield Park episodes. ... And it's not great. The guests are fine, especially Jacqueline Firkins (who has extensive knowledge of period clothes and costumes in general and all aspects of MP the book). But Alexa Donne the host is abysmal - it's always bad when the least informed person in the party is the loudest, the most opinionated and the most obnoxious one. She seems she doesn't know much about the books, knows absolutely nothing about the time period, has some weird fixations (e.g. G. Paltrow) and insists on presenting her absolutely unsubstantiated ideas/opinions as facts - e.g. she blames Billie Piper for a lot regarding the 2007 MP movie and accusing her of being a diva, I was like o.k. , it as well might be, but what are your sources, Alexa? And you know she did zero research on the movie, didn't finish reading the book either but she has a feeling that BP is a diva and she's to blame. WTH?! Also when she doesn't like an adaptation eventhough one of her guests prefers it she insists on adding everytime she mentions that adaptation that "it's the bad one", "the one nobody likes", "the horrid one", "the one everybody hates", basically erasing her guest's opinion and replacing it with her own. I don't know her, but in the first two episodes she comes across as a terrible host.

Why she thought it was a good idea to judge what is or isn't a good adaptation of MP - which she didn't read - I have no idea. But she is absolutely positive that the 1999 MP is a perfect adaptation. What?!

Ep 1 - Which version of Emma is best?: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmWC3...
Ep 2 - Mansfield Park Movie Debate: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBtH2...

Zuzana wrote: "I'm listening to Alexa Donne's Jane Austen Summer Watchathon 2020 on YouTube. She made a 1h30 min+ episodes of discussions with fellow JA fanfiction/sequels/retellings authors, each episode dedicat..."

Oof. Sounds awful. 😅

It probably sounds worse than it is. ;) I really think that the guests are okay.
Jacqueline Firkins in the Mansfield Park episode was great. I would have loved her to talk about Mansfield Park for half an hour without interruption. She wrote a MP retelling Hearts, Strings, and Other Breakable Things. Don't know if it's any good, certainly has some scathing reviews on GR, but whether her book is good or bad, she knows a lot about the source material and that's what counts in these debates.

Zuzana wrote: "It probably sounds worse than it is. ;) I really think that the guests are okay.
Jacqueline Firkins in the Mansfield Park episode was great. I would have loved her to talk about Mansfield Park for..."

I'm sure the guests are fine, but I could NOT handle a host like that, lol! I was cringing just reading about it. 🤣

I must subconsciously hate myself. I finished Alexa Donne's Jane Austen Summer Watchathon. Watched the rest of the episode - all four remaining ones.

the host: Alexa Donne
the co-host: Jennieke Cohen

It was rough. Alexa Donne is a terrible obnoxious host, Jannieke Cohen as a co-host is sweet but too submissive and lets Alexa run the show (to the ground). The series has a couple of great, some good and some passable guests (all of the guests are YA/romance authors) - I liked Jacqueline Firkins, Tobie Easton, Kathy MacMillan & Laura Taylor Namey.

I was hoping that the last two episodes (on P&P and Persuasion) would be better - because Pride and Prejudice seems to be everybody's favorite and the host wrote a sci-fi/fantasy re-telling of Persuasion. Well, it turned out that she doesn't remember the plot of Persuasion (the book she reworked and claims is her favorite JA book!) because "she haven't read it for a while - last time was about a year or two ago" so she read the wiki entry instead. Yeah, I totally buy that! In short, her contribution is mostly gushing over the actors she finds hot - like it's a litmus test for a good JA adaptation. *sigh* She has zero understanding of the more passive of JA heroines (Elinor Dashwood, Anne Elliot & Fanny Price) and several times she implied that these heroines are "defective" and present day's YA authors would do a better job writing them. She's a YA romance author and she seems to appreciate only the romantic aspects of the books/movies which is pretty limiting. My favorite moment was when in the Northanger Abbey episode she revealed she read the book when she was 17 and doesn't remember anything about it at all except that she didn't hate it. Then proceeded to comment throughout the episode how well/badly adapted the book was into the 2007 movie. She just lacks self-awareness. To be fair, the episode on P&P was fine, not a deep discussion I hoped for but it was fine.

If you want to give the series a try, I would recommend the P&P episode. If you won't be able to stand Alexa Donne, avoid the rest because in the P&P stream she is on her best behavior.

I had high hopes for actual authors discussing Jane Austen and adaptations of her novels. Turns out that some YA authors are surprisingly shallow and have nothing interesting to say.

Ep 3 - Is Sense & Sensibility the perfect Austen film?: https://youtu.be/1ph6EU-aHjA
Ep 4 - Northhanger Abbey Needs Some Love: https://youtu.be/ITyPE7fRSYI
Ep 5 - Persuasion Movie Feels: https://youtu.be/WP6azCeQ5Fo
Ep 6 - Pride & Prejudice Movie vs. Mini!: https://youtu.be/ryyabNwudmY

Martin Amis on the Genius of Jane Austen (and What the Adaptations Get Wrong)
Or: Trapped in a Movie Theater with Salman Rushdie, c. 1996

If you want to check out Martin Amis's 1998 essay on Jane Austen's work and on adaptations of her work (esp 1995 P&P), you can read it on Literary Hub: https://lithub.com/martin-amis-on-the...

published in The Rub Of Time


Can't say I agree with every point he made. I could especially do without his condescending tone.

other Jane Austen articles on Literary Hub: https://lithub.com/tag/jane-austen/