Works Inspired by Jane Austen

Image
WebH.JaneAustenInspired.122023.png

Jane Austen was born 248 years ago on Dec. 16, 1775, and yet her works somehow remain relevant and intriguing to this day. While most public domain works have inspired retellings and twists over the years, Austen might very well lead the field, with an endless number of variations on her stories available in both print and film. The options are literally endless--crochet inspired by Austen? We have it. Bollywood Pride and Prejudice? We have it too! Emma, but it's Alicia Silverstone in yellow plaid and, like, totally not into Paul Rudd? Yep, that's Clueless, and it's another twist on Austen.

So, whether you're looking for some Regency, or something modern, or something sci-fi, or paranormal--the point is, Austen's retellings have it all. Dive into this list, and find some new favorites, or review 67 additional titles from Library Journal.

The Bedside, Bathtub, and Armchair Companion to Jane Austen

by
Carol J. Adams

Providing entertaining capsules of each of Austen's beloved novels, along with information on such important subjects as white soup, carriages, what happened at the ha-ha, and, of course, all those characters we love to hate, this book will be of interest to both Janeite and newcomer alike.

Northranger

by
Rey Terciero

Cade Munoz has has always loved to escape into the world of a good horror movie. After all, horror movies are scary, but to Cade--a closeted queer teen growing up in rural Texas--real life can be way scarier. When Cade is sent to spend the summer working as a ranch hand to help earn extra money for his family, he is horrified. Cade hates everything about the ranch, from the early mornings to the mountains of horse poop he has to clean up. The only silver lining is the company of the two teens who live there--in particular, the ruggedly handsome and enigmatic Henry. But as unexpected sparks begin to fly between Cade and Henry, things get complicated. Henry is reluctant to share the mysterious details of several local deaths, and Cade begins to wonder what else he may be hiding. Inspired by the gothic romance of Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey comes a modern love story so romantic it's scary.

The Murder of Mr. Wickham

by
Claudia Gray

After many years of happy marriage, Emma Knightley and her husband are throwing a house party, bringing together distant relatives and new acquaintances-not all of whom are well known to the Knightleys but are certainly beloved by every Jane Austen fan: Elizabeth and Fitzwilliam Darcy, Marianne and Colonel Brandon, Anne and Captain Wentworth, and Fanny and Edmund Bertram. Very much not invited is Mr. Wickham...Yet the Knightleys and their guests are all shocked when Wickham turns up murdered-except, of course, for the killer hidden in their midst. With everyone a suspect, it falls to the house party's two youngest guests to solve the mystery...Juliet Tilney, the smart and resourceful daughter of Catherine and Henry Tilney, eager for adventure outside Northanger Abbey; and Jonathan Darcy, Elizabeth and Darcy's eldest son...In a tantalizing fusion of Austen and Christie, the unlikely pair must put aside their own poor first impressions-and uncover the guilty party before an innocent person is sentenced to hang.

Now with a brand-new sequel, The Late Mrs. Willoughby.

The Scandalous Confessions of Lydia Bennet, Witch

by
Melinda Taub

A sparkling, witchy reimagining of Pride and Prejudice, told from the perspective of the troublesome and-according to her-much-maligned youngest Bennet sister, Lydia. In this exuberant reimagining of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, Lydia Bennet puts pen to paper to relate the real events and aftermath of the classic story from her own perspective...Full of enchantment, intrigue, danger, and boundless magic, The Scandalous Confessions of Lydia Bennet, Witch has all the irreverent wit, strength, and romance of Pride and Prejudice-while offering a highly unexpected redemption for the wildest Bennet sister.

Pride and Premeditation

by
Tirzah Price

Seventeen-year-old aspiring lawyer Lizzie Bennet seeks to solve a murder before her rival Mr. Darcy beats her to it. The first of a series, including Sense and Second-Degree Murder and Manslaughter Park.

Pride, Prejudice, and Other Flavors

by
Sonali Dev

Sonali Dev's swoon-worthy series retells the stories of Jane Austen through the Rajes, an Indian family in San Francisco. Pride, Prejudice, and Other Flavors is the first book; it is followed by Recipe for Persuasion, Incense and Sensibility, and The Emma Project.

Jane Was Here: An Illustrated Guide to Jane Austen's England

by
Nicole Jacobsen

An illustrated guide to Jane Austen's England -- from the settings in her novels and the scenes in the television and film adaptations, to her homes and other important locations throughout her own life.
Take a whimsical tour of Jane Austen's England-- from the settings in her novels and the scenes in the wildly popular television and film adaptations, to her homes and other important locations throughout her own life. Tread in Jane's footsteps as you explore her school in the old gatehouse of the ruined Reading Abbey; her perfectly-preserved home in her Chawton cottage, where she spent the last eight years of her life; or her final resting place in Winchester Cathedral. Jacobsen and Dayton take readers on an enchanting adventure through the ups and downs of the world of Jane Austen.

Sansei and Sensibility

by
Karen Tei Yamashita

The protagonists of these skillful and inventive stories have traveled various paths--from Japan to Brazil, L.A. to Gardena, San Francisco to Tokyo--but along the way, they have all become archivists, whether they know it or not. They examine the contents of deceased relatives' freezers, tape-record high-school locker-room chatter, cart the contents of a household cross-country, or collect a community's gossip while cleaning the teeth of its inhabitants. They sparkle with Karen's signature wit and humor while diving into questions of race, class, colonialism, immigration, and, above all, inheritance--familial, cultural, emotional, artistic, and otherwise. How does what we collect along the way define or negate our experiences? Can we ever really be free of it? Should we want to? In second half of the book, Yamashita imagines how Jane Austen's seven novels might look 'in a small provincial armpit of postwar sunshine' in sixties and seventies Japanese America. Mr. Darcy is the captain of the football team, Mansfield Park has materialized in a suburb of L.A., bake sales have replaced balls, and station wagons, not horse-drawn carriages, are the preferred mode of transit. In these buoyant and inventive stories, Yamashita asks what the act of transferring a 'classic' tale across boundaries-of space, time, race, genre--can tell us about the tropes that ungird our experiences.

Pride and Prejudice and Pittsburgh

by
Rachael Lippincott

What if you found a once-in-a-lifetime love…just not in your lifetime? Audrey Cameron has lost her spark. But after getting dumped by her first love and waitlisted at her dream art school all in one week, she has no intention of putting her heart on the line again to get it back. So when local curmudgeon Mr. Montgomery walks into her family’s Pittsburgh convenience store saying he can help her, Audrey doesn’t know what she’s expecting…but it’s definitely not that she’ll be transported back to 1812 to become a Regency romance heroine.

Lucy Sinclair isn’t expecting to find an oddly dressed girl claiming to be from two hundred years in the future on her family’s estate. But she has to admit it’s a welcome distraction from being courted by a man her father expects her to marry—who offers a future she couldn’t be less interested in. Not that anyone has cared about what or who she’s interested in since her mother died, taking Lucy’s spark with her. While the two girls try to understand what’s happening and how to send Audrey home, their sparks make a comeback in a most unexpected way. Because as they both try over and over to fall for their suitors and the happily-ever-afters everyone expects of them, they find instead they don’t have to try at all to fall for each other. But can a most unexpected love story survive even more impossible circumstances?

Unmarriageable

by
Soniah Kamal

In this retelling of Pride and Prejudice set in modern-day Pakistan, Alys Binat has sworn never to marry--until an encounter with one Mr. Darsee at a wedding makes her reconsider. A scandal and vicious rumor in the Binat family have destroyed their fortune and prospects for desirable marriages, but Alys, the second and most practical of the five Binat daughters, has found happiness teaching English literature to schoolgirls. Knowing that many of her students won't make it to graduation before dropping out to marry and start having children, Alys teaches them about Jane Austen and her other literary heroes and hopes to inspire them to dream of more. When an invitation arrives to the biggest wedding their small town has seen in years, Mrs. Binat excitedly sets to work preparing her daughters to fish for eligible--and rich--bachelors, certain that their luck is about to change. On the first night of the festivities, Alys's lovely older sister, Jena, catches the eye of one of the most eligible bachelors. But his friend Valentine Darsee is clearly unimpressed by the Binat family. Alys accidentally overhears his unflattering assessment of her, and quickly dismisses him and his snobbish ways. But as the days of lavish wedding parties unfold, the Binats wait breathlessly to see if Jena will land a proposal--and Alys begins to realize that Darsee's brusque manner may be hiding a very different man from the one she saw at first glance.

Also available as a Book Club Kit!

Descriptions adapted from the publisher.
By CynthiaM on December 11, 2023