The Best Jane Austen Adaptations Ranked

Austen’s third novel follows downtrodden child Fanny Price as she’s sent from her poor household to live with wealthy family members, and the consequences that follow her feeling out of her place her entire life. It takes a dedicated Austenhead to adore the book where her dowdy and quiet main character falls in love with and eventually marries her cousin, which might explain why this adaptation takes the character in a different direction. Actress Frances O’Connor imbues Fanny with way more spine than she has in the text. The film also explicitly addresses how the Price family’s wealth was built on the backs of slaves, adding historical context that makes the criticisms baked into Austen’s work an integral part of the plot.

Austen’s saga of broken engagements and late-in-life love has a bit more going on than her most popular books. There are mistresses, Navy captains, family fortunes lost and regained, and a heroine who’s closer to middle age than the fresh blush of youth. But this adaptation thrives on production choices that keep it grounded. There’s little makeup, the costumes are period-accurate, and Ciarán Hinds gives a standout performance — all of which helps the story feel almost indistinguishable from the book. This is the type of Austen adaptation that you don’t boo when your teacher puts it on at school.

A not-universally-acknowledged truth: Many movies get better when people SING. Directed by Gurinder Chadha, Bride and Prejudice tracks the modern-day love story of Lalita Bakshi, a young Indian woman bound by familial expectations, and Will Darcy, an American friend who puts his foot in his mouth at a wedding by calling arranged marriages backward. The film, set in London, India, and Los Angeles, turns Austen Bollywood, with an explosion of dance numbers, memorable songs, and a double-wedding ending.

If adaptations are all about form, The Lizzie Bennet Diaries might be the most inventive. The web series from Hank Green imagines a modern version of the Bennet family, with stay-at-home grad-student Lizzie narrating the story through vlogs for her thesis project. This is the adaptation that might give Lizzie’s best friend Charlotte the most prominent role; in the vlogs, Charlotte is both director and editor, and remains in Lizzie’s life throughout the story. The clever approach helped make it the first digital series to ever win an Emmy Award.

It’s a shame Austen died before learning about the gay nexus that is New York’s Fire Island. It’s full of things she loved: drama, intrigue, passionate romance, and plenty of balls (albeit maybe not the kind she most often wrote about). Lucky for us, Joel Kim Booster figured out just how much the queer summering grounds and Austen had in common. This rom-com retelling of Pride of Prejudice starring Booster, Bowen Yang, Conrad Ricamora, Margaret Cho, and Matt Rogers puts new faces to Austen’s familiar characters, placing them alongside Grindr, the Meat Locker, drug use, naked house parties, and sweet sunset countdowns.

The common nickname for this BBC miniseries of Pride and Prejudice makes its draw clear: This is “the Colin Firth one.” Its place in the history books is helped along by Jennifer Ehle’s Elizabeth — whose refusal of Mr. Darcy’s first proposal is so full of indignation that it practically singes the green patterned wallpaper. (It was celebrated in the viral 2015 meme “Rest in pieces, Mr. Darcy,” which soundtracks Ehle’s refusal scene to the beat drop of DJ Snake and Lil Jon’s “Turn Down for What.”) But Firth, as Darcy, also does some heavy lifting. Practically every actor who’s ever stepped into the landed gentryman’s boots knows how to make him gloomy, impenetrable, and brooding. Firth made him awkward and angry — a choice that makes Darcy’s eventual marriage to Elizabeth feel well earned.

Before he gave us The Ice Storm, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and Brokeback Mountain, director Ang Lee tackled Austen’s first novel, adapted by and starring Emma Thompson as the sensible Elinor Dashwood. Hugh Grant is at his most charming and bumbling as the object of her affections, Edward Ferrars, while Kate Winslet and Alan Rickman play the slowly blossoming lovers Marianne Dashwood and Colonel Brandon. Thompson won an Oscar for adapted screenplay, but it’s Lee’s knack for emotional restraint and tension that make this period romance a high point of the genre.

Yes, most people remember Gwenyth Paltrow’s cherubic 1996 screen version of Emma, complete with ringlet curls and a bow and arrow. But the Autumn de Wilde-directed iteration, starring Anya Taylor-Joy, manages to deliver on the most essential aspect of Austen’s book. The titular Emma is beautiful. But she’s also impulsive, spoiled, and, at times, incredibly cruel to the people around her. Taylor-Joy perfects Emma’s look of shame. And armed with sizzling chemistry between her and Johnny Flynn, as George Knightley, and hysterical character work from Josh O’Connor and Mia Goth, this Emma sings.

Director Georgia Oakley, I was unfamiliar with your game. This new version of Sense and Sensibility proves just how timeless Austen’s work remains. Daisy Edgar-Jones and Esmé Creed-Miles (daughter of Samantha Morton) put the power of sisterhood on stark display in this pastoral version of the author’s classic. They’re helped along by a quiet George MacKay, whose sad eyes lend the film a romantic, tragic air, and a borderline riotous Fiona Shaw, who’s an Austen expert at this point. (She played Lady Russell in the 1995 adaptation of Persuasion and will play Lady Catherine de Bourgh in Netflix’s six-part Pride and Prejudice coming in December.) The end result is a film that manages to strike a balance between epic romance and rousing comedy, packaged in the way Austen adored best — a simple tale about what people are willing to do for love.

Two decades after its premiere, the Joe Wright-helmed Pride and Prejudice is the blueprint for Austen adaptations. The cast is full of heavy hitters, including Keira Knightly as Elizabeth Bennet, the late Donald Sutherland as Lizzie’s father, Matthew Macfadyen as Mr. Darcy, Rosamund Pike as poor Jane Bennet, Judi Dench as Lady Catherine, and Jena Malone and Carey Mulligan as the youngest Bennet girls. But it’s Wright’s treatment of landscape that makes this film a sleepover staple. The woods breathe, the rush of the air feels like it blows off the screen and right into your living room, and the foggy English countryside transports viewers into Austen’s lived world.