Was there really something outdated about “You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope”? According to HarperCollins, yes. The Guardian reports that the publisher “will team modern authors with Austen’s six novels, asking them to reimagine the books in a contemporary setting.”
We will withhold judgement (*sob*). Clueless (which put Emma in a contemporary setting without explicitly saying so) was a good movie, after all, although a movie adaptation of a book is different from a book adaptation of a book. Bridget Jones’s Diary, in which Helen Fielding brilliantly riffed on Pride and Prejudice, is a great and funny comic novel, but not a direct adaptation.
Joanna Trollope will write the first book in the series, an adaptation of Sense and Sensibility.
