In this special year marking the 250th anniversary of Jane Austen’s birth, we remember Jane Austen beyond her own novels, because her legacy transcends the boundaries of imagination and expands into different art forms.
Among them are rewritings, retellings, and new fictions inspired by her world; works that have kept Austen’s essence alive in contemporary literature and expanded the borders of her fictional universe.
To purists, this may sound like sacrilege. Yet for those who wish to continue inhabiting Austen’s world, it is a way to keep it vibrant and pay tribute to both the woman and the writer.
For although we can always return — again and again — to her books, we also dream of new ways of seeing those stories, of imagining that her world is not static but a living landscape that continues to grow around us.
The Other Bennet Sister, by Janice Hadlow (2020)
In The Other Bennet Sister, British author Janice Hadlow reconstructs the life of Mary Bennet, the least attractive and most serious of Jane Austen’s sisters, to explore what happens when an intelligent, sensible woman without physical charm tries to make her way in a world that values only beauty and female obedience.
Hadlow delivers a novel of vindication and inner awakening, in which Mary frees herself from her assigned role — the dull sister, the humorless moralist — to pursue her own sense of dignity and desire.
By bringing this secondary character to the forefront, the author reminds us that even in classic literature, the overlooked often have the most to say.
The Winter of Our Discontent: A Pride and Prejudice Variation, by Grace Gibson (2025)
The Winter of Our Discontent: A Pride and Prejudice Variation by Grace Gibson is a reinterpretation of Jane Austen’s classic, this time from a darker and more emotionally turbulent perspective.
In this variation, after signing the marriage certificate as Elizabeth Darcy, the former Elizabeth Bennet feels that she has symbolically died by accepting an imposed marriage. Meanwhile, her husband, Fitzwilliam Darcy, hurt and resentful, perceives her as an outsider, and she is silenced, unable to explain the true circumstances that led to their union.
When the couple arrives at Pemberley, the tension intensifies: renewing their bond becomes a romantic challenge and a test of transformation and patience.
In these pages, Grace Gibson explores how, even under the weight of resentment and silence, a new intimacy can blossom if given time and space to flourish.
Miss Austen, by Gill Hornby (2020)
In Miss Austen by Gill Hornby, we glimpse Jane Austen’s life through the eyes of her sister Cassandra, her confidante and guardian of the family legacy.
Set decades after the celebrated author’s death, the story follows Cassandra as she visits the home of an old friend, intent on retrieving a collection of letters that could expose intimate details about Jane.
On this journey, Hornby paints a deeply human portrait of a woman who lived in the shadow of literary genius. With restrained sensitivity, the author captures the invisible bonds between the sisters: the complicity, affection, and the sacrifices that defined women’s lives in the nineteenth-century.
Miss Austen is, ultimately, a meditation on memory, loyalty, and the quiet forms of love that endure beyond time and fame.
The Jane Austen Project, by Kathleen A. Flynn (2017)
The Jane Austen Project is a blend of science fiction, history, and Austen fandom with a daring premise: two travelers from the future journey to 1815 on a mission to recover Jane Austen’s lost works and preserve her literary legacy.
Rachel Katzman and Liam Finucane arrive in nineteenth-century England posing as a married couple of West Indian planters, determined to infiltrate Austen’s inner circle, gain access to her private correspondence, and retrieve a complete version of a vanished manuscript.
Amid historical rewritings, moral dilemmas, and a countdown that threatens to trap them in the past, Kathleen A. Flynn’s novel poses a provocative question: to what extent is it permissible to alter time in the name of art?
The Murder of Mr. Wickham, by Claudia Gray (2022)
Claudia Gray reinvents the Austen universe in The Murder of Mr. Wickham with an unexpected twist: the villain par excellence — George Wickham — is found murdered at a country gathering attended by characters from all of Jane Austen’s beloved novels.
What begins as a pleasant reunion of old acquaintances soon descends into a tangle of suspicion, secrets, and hidden motives, where no guest is entirely free of guilt.
The author chooses Juliet Tilney (daughter of Catherine and Henry, from Northanger Abbey) and Jonathan Darcy (eldest son of Elizabeth and Fitzwilliam Darcy) as investigators. They delve into a classic-style mystery: interrogations, red herrings, and social rivalries.