News just in!
Following the
recent report that Austen's
Emma will be re-worked by
Alexander McCall Smith, the BBC News website has just reported that all of Jane Austen's published novels will be rewritten by
six modern authors and translated into a modern-day setting.
Joanna Trollope's version of
Sense and Sensibility will be launched imminently.
I'm
not sure I approve - how do you rewrite a classic? I think Austen's
novels have stood the test of time - they are still immensely popular in
their own right.
Many
authors, including the lovely
Jane Odiwe,
have created fresh novels and sequels from Austen's original novels and
characters, and I personally welcome anything which popularizes Austen
and her works.
But will readers think that
the Austen Project is a step too far? Should Austen's novels be - do they
need to be - updated for modern readers? I'd love to know what do you think?
Update 24 October: You can read views by two experts, Professor Kathryn Sutherland from the University of Oxford, and Professor Emma Clery from the University of Southampton, on the Austen rewrites
here.
Image:
'Will you do me the honour of reading that letter?' Mr Darcy gives
Elizabeth Bennet a letter in the park. Illustration by C.E. Brock for
Pride and Prejudice (Cassell’s Book of Knowledge Vol. VIII, (Waverley Book Co., c.1920)).
A portrait of Jane Austen which
was specially commissioned by her nephew James Edward Austen-Leigh will
be put up for auction by Sotheby's in December, according to the BBC. The portrait was painted to accompany Austen-Leigh's Memoir of his aunt 1870 (see engraving, left, from the author's collection - actually from Harper's New Monthly Magazine,
