Of the Persuasion: Why Austen will be remixed to eternity

Netflix's Persuasion has sparked outrage among Austen fans before it even premieres – why does the author's work still excite us so much?

When Persuasion premieres on Netflix on 15 July, it will join the long, long list of Jane Austen adaptations – many, if not all, of which, take liberties. From a bedraggled (and butterfly-inducing) Colin Firth climbing out of a lake in the BBC’s Pride and Prejudice (1995) to teenage rom-com Clueless (1995) – based on the author’s 1815 novel Emma – the value of reinterpreting Austen’s fictional worlds is a truth universally acknowledged. But why – as in the (2016) film Pride and Prejudice and Zombies – do these particular stories and their characters remain … undead?

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