What’s Up With All These New Jane Austen Retellings?
This content contains affiliate links. When you buy through these links, we may earn an affiliate commission.
Is it just me, or have there been a lot of new Jane Austen retellings of late? I mean, Austen retellings have been around for ages, think Clueless and Pride and Prejudice and Zombies for a start. But it seems like, within the last several years, more and more Austen books have been getting new takes. Why? Well, I have a few ideas, and the fact that Jane Austen’s books are a classic of the English literary canon certainly doesn’t hurt, but the short answer is this: I think we all want to see ourselves in our favorite stories. Jane Austen’s novels are so universally loved. Every writer who loves these stories, wants to see themselves in these stories, has a longing to write the version of a Jane Austen novel that goes the way they always wanted it to. It’s the same reason people write fanfiction, the same reason people have been telling and retelling the same tales from time immemorial.
There are plenty run-of-the-mill contemporary romance retellings of Jane Austen books, but those aren’t what interest me. It’s all the new retellings from queer and BIPOC voices, the stories that image happy endings for sidelined characters or completely new identities for beloved characters, that I think are most interesting. Despite, and directly in spite, of all the book bans trying to censor what people are allowed to read across the United States in particular, diverse stories are still being told, and they’re still being published. We hunger for them.
In a brilliant article Book Riot Senior Editor Kelly Jensen wrote for School Library Journal, the authors she interviewed emphasized how their retellings are inspired by and build on Austen’s work. YA author Gabe Cole Novoa pointed to the relevance of Austen’s stories today, where women and femme people face “eerily similar expectations.” L.C. Rosen, whose book Emmett is a queer reimagining of Emma, sums it up nicely:
Queer people existed and fell in love and had romances and read Austen and related to her characters. Retelling her stories as queer ones is a way of asserting that these stories are for us as much as anyone.”
Author Sayantani DasGupta, who has written multiple Jane Austen-inspired YA novels, refers to multicultural retellings as a sort of “storied healing for those of us who have too long been ignored, erased, or vilified.”
Things aren’t always easy, and progress isn’t linear. We move forward and backward and forward again. But these new Jane Austen retellings, like many other great novels, remind us that everyone’s story is just as worthy and important as the next.
All access members continue below for invigorating Austen retellings.
The Unruly Heart of Miss Darcy by Erin Edwards
Release: April 7, 2026
Less Pride and Prejudice retelling, more Pride and Prejudice sequel, The Unruly Heart of Miss Darcy follows Georgiana Darcy and her happily ever after. Her brother already found the love of his life, but Georgiana knows from experience it won’t be as easy for her. Her one and only kiss with another girl resulted in blackmail that almost ruined her reputation. Then she meets Kitty Bennet. For the first time in years, it seems like love and happiness are within sight. But the one man who could still ruin everything st out there, all too close to the Bennet’s home, and in trying to protect herself and the ones she loves, she might just lose her own chance for a happy ending.
The Miseducation of Caroline Bingley by Lindz McLeod
Release: May 5, 2026
The second book in McLeod’s Ausentatious series follows Caroline Bingley, continuing with her trend of featuring secondary (and oft-maligned) Pride and Prejudice characters in her stories. After Caroline Bingley’s disastrously embarrassing experiences in the pages of Pride and Prejudice, she hatches a plan: reform her damaged image by asking Georgiana Darcy to teach her how to be just as perfect as her. Only, Georgiana’s not so sure, and beneath her perfect facade lie troubles of her own. Will she be able to reform the infamous Caroline Bingley? Or will they each realize they may have been looking for the wrong thing all along?
I thoroughly enjoyed The Unlikely Pursuit of Mary Bennet, which imagines a love story between Charlotte Lucas Collins and Mary Bennet after the former is widowed. If you can’t wait to get your hands on this book, I definitely recommend reading that one in the meantime.
Behind Five Willows by June Hur
Release: May 26, 2026
I tend to be pretty loud about my love of June Hur and her YA historical fiction, but never have I been so excited about one of her books as I was for this Pride and Prejudice-inspired story about an illegal book transcriber and upper-class gentleman secretly writing government-banned fiction under a pen name. Pride and Prejudice retellings so rarely deal with—or are even interested—in the class commentary of the original, but Hur incorporates it beautifully by exploring class and women’s rights in eighteenth-century Korea. The story itself doesn’t necessarily try to stick too closely to the original, but in that aspect, it’s maybe the most accurate retelling I’ve ever read.
Rational Creatures by Gabe Cole Novoa
Release: September 1, 2026
There’s not a whole lot of information about Gabe Cole Novoa’s forthcoming Persuasion retelling aside from the fact that it features a trans man reunited with the man whose heart he broke many years ago when he broke off their engagement. What I do know is that I’m incredibly excited about it, because Novoa wrote one of my favorite Pride and Prejudice retellings, a YA historical romance in the Remixed Classics series titled Most Ardently. I definitely trust Persuasion in his skilled hands.
Emiko by Chieri Uegaki
Release: 2025
Most of the new Austen retellings have focused on Pride and Prejudice or Persuasion, but this one from last year sets its sights on another oft-reimagined Austen work: Emma. Emiko Kimori has two loves: cooking and matchmaking. Never mind that her childhood best friend Kenzo Sanada thinks she should focus a little less on everybody else’s love lives and more on her own. Emiko knows she has a gift, and she’s determined to share it with everyone around her, including the new girl at school. But when Emiko finds herself falling for the last person she ever expected, she’ll finally have to figure out what it means to fall in love herself.
The Cuffing Game by Lyla Lee
Release: 2025
A college student trying to get over her crush on an annoying (and handsome) classmate winds up casting him for a campus dating show she’s producing, only to realize he might be less annoying than she thought. It’s a contemporary YA romance only very (very) loosely inspired by Pride and Prejudice, with both Korean and bisexual rep.
Give Me a Reason by Jayci Lee
Release: 2025
Anne Lee left the love of her life behind to pursue an acting career in Korea and save her father from financial ruin. For years, she’s been trying to convince herself it was the right thing to do. Leaving him behind was the only way to keep him from following her and giving up on all his dreams, after all. Frederick Nam finally decided to move on with his life after missing and hating Anne for years. He’s become the firefighter he always wanted to be. But now they’re thrown together again for a friend’s wedding, and all the love they felt for each other is still there, no matter how hard they try to deny it in this lovely contemporary Persuasion retelling.
Here are even more Jane Austen retellings for you to read and enjoy:
Queering Jane Austen: 12 LGBTQ Jane Austen Retellings
Queering Jane Austen in YA Literature
