This book traces the history of film and television adaptations (nearly 30 to date) of Jane Austen manuscripts, compares the adaptations to the manuscripts, compares the way different adaptations treat the novels, and analyzes the adaptations as examples of cinematic art. The first of seven chapters explains why the novels of Jane Austen have become a popular source of film and television adaptations. The following six chapters each cover one of Austen's novels: Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Emma, Mansfield Park, Persuasion, and Northanger Abbey.

This work argues for a fresh approach that begins with a reading of the novels that emphasizes their auditory and visual dimensions. Building on their examination of Austen's inherently cinematic features, the authors then develop productive new readings of the films.

In 1995 and 1996 six film or television adaptations of Jane Austen's novels were produced -- an unprecedented number. More amazing, all were critical and/or box office successes. What accounts for this explosion of interest? Much of the appeal of these films lies in our nostalgic desire at the end of the millennium for an age of greater politeness and sexual reticence. Austen's ridicule of deceit and pretentiousness also appeals to our fin de siècle sensibilities. The novels were changed, however, to enhance their appeal to a wide popular audience, and the revisions reveal much about our own culture and its values.

Jane Austen on Screen is a collection of essays exploring the literary and cinematic implications of translating Austen's prose into film. Contributors raise questions of how prose fiction and cinema differ, of how mass commercial audiences require changes to script and character, and of how continually remade films evoke memories of earlier productions.

Examines recent Austen remakes as well as other "post-heritage" films and television shows to show how the past is reshaped for a contemporary market.

Lisa Hopkins analyzes eight film adaptations which have taken either Shakespeare or Jane Austen out of their original geographical or cultural context and transposed them to a new location, allowing for a powerful interrogation both of what these texts mean in the modern world, and of Englishness itself.