--- title: Eligible, Jane Steele and More Rewrites of Classics description: Curtis Sittenfeld’s Eligible rounds out a season of reimagined 19th-century heroines canonical: https://time.com/4291325/classic-novel-rewrites-austen-bronte/ author: Sarah Begley article:opinion: true article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2016-08-05T14:10:46.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-05-11T05:00:08.008Z article:section: Ideas og:title: A New Round of Classic Rewrites, From Austen to Brontë og:description: 'Eligible' is only one of the revamps on bookshelves this year og:url: https://time.com/4291325/classic-novel-rewrites-austen-bronte/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: TIME og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: A New Round of Classic Rewrites, From Austen to Brontë twitter:description: 'Eligible' is only one of the revamps on bookshelves this year twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production --- # A New Round of Classic Rewrites, From Austen to Brontë > Sponsored content. 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Inside TIME is the newsletter where TIME's Editor-in-Chief explains cover selection and the editorial reasoning behind major stories. It is free at time.com/newsletters. #### Who is the editor of TIME? Sam Jacobs is TIME's Editor-in-Chief. He writes Inside TIME, a twice-weekly newsletter about the newsroom's reporting and editorial decisions. #### Is Inside TIME free? Yes. Inside TIME is a free newsletter, available at time.com/newsletters. A paid TIME subscription is separate and available at time.com/subscribe-agent. by [Sarah Begley](https://time.com/author/sarah-begley/) ## Sarah Begley Aug 5, 2016 2:10 PM UTC by [Sarah Begley](https://time.com/author/sarah-begley/) ## Sarah Begley Aug 5, 2016 2:10 PM UTC Classics enter the Western canon for a reason: because as readers, we can’t stop going back to them. But for better or worse, neither can writers. Every year, we get a new crop of reimagined classics, from Helen Fielding’s superb [_Pride and Prejudice_](http://www.amazon.com/dp/0143105426/?tag=timecom-20)rewrite [_Bridget Jones’s Diary_](http://www.amazon.com/dp/0141000198/?tag=timecom-20) (1996) to Seth Grahame-Smith’s more violent [_Pride and Prejudice and Zombies_](http://www.amazon.com/dp/1594743347/?tag=timecom-20) (2009). This year has been no exception: In addition to Curtis Sittenfeld’s [_Eligible_](http://www.amazon.com/dp/1400068320/?tag=timecom-20), a take on the quintessential Austen love story, there’s also a slew of new titles riffing on Charlotte Brontë’s [_Jane Eyre_](http://www.amazon.com/dp/0141441143/?tag=timecom-20) thanks to the 200th anniversary of that author’s birth, among other rewrites. Adapting a centuries-old story for contemporary readers requires a certain balance between looseness with the facts and faithfulness to the feelings. These new releases span a wide range of fidelity. _Eligible_ takes the events of Austen’s story and transplants them to contemporary Cincinnati, adding details about CrossFit and reality TV but hewing closely to the character arcs of the original, while Catherine Lowell’s [_The Madwoman Upstairs_](http://www.amazon.com/dp/1501124218/?tag=timecom-20) takes a more liberal approach to recasting the narrative of a Jane Eyre-ish girl and her own Rochester-esque paramour. These books also demand varying degrees of familiarity with the originals. Readers would do well to brush up on the finer plot points of Emily Brontë’s [_Wuthering Heights_](http://www.amazon.com/dp/0143105434/?tag=timecom-20) before reading Alison Case’s [_Nelly Dean_](http://www.amazon.com/dp/1605989614/?tag=timecom-20), whereas readers of Theresa Rebeck’s [_I’m Glad About You_](http://www.amazon.com/dp/0399172882/?tag=timecom-20) might not even pick up on the fact that she drew inspiration for her characters from Theodore Dreiser’s [_Sister Carrie_](http://www.amazon.com/dp/0140188282/?tag=timecom-20) and George Eliot’s Dr. Lydgate from [_Middlemarch_](http://www.amazon.com/dp/0143107720/?tag=timecom-20). Here’s a closer look at seven writers paying homage to their foremothers this year: ### _Eligible_  Random House [By Curis Sittenfeld](http://www.amazon.com/dp/1400068320/?tag=timecom-20) The author of [_Prep_](http://www.amazon.com/dp/081297235X/?tag=timecom-20) transposes the Bennet family to contemporary Cincinnati, where all five grown siblings are home after their father’s heart attack. Liz is a women’s mag writer; Jane is a yogi; Kitty and Lydia are CrossFit junkies with no real jobs and Mary is working on the latest in a string of online degrees. Darcy and Bingley are both doctors, and Bingley is an alum of a _The Bachelor-_esque TV show, _Eligible_, which figures in the novel’s denouement. ### _I’m Glad About You_  Putnam [By Theresa Rebeck](http://www.amazon.com/dp/0399172882/?tag=timecom-20) The playwright and creator of NBC’s _Smash_ takes inspiration from two characters in classic literature to tell the story of what happens when you find your true love too young. Alison (loosely drawn from Theodore Dreiser’s _Sister Carrie_) is an aspiring actress who finds success in New York. Her high school sweetheart, Kyle (inspired by Dr. Lydgate from George Eliot’s _Middlemarch_) is back in Cincinnati, practicing medicine and unhappily married to a woman who grows more distant every day. Throughout the adventures and disappointments of their 20s, neither one can stop wondering what would have happened if they’d ended up together. ### _The Madwoman Upstairs_  Touchstone [By Catherine Lowell](http://www.amazon.com/dp/1501124218/?tag=timecom-20) When America Samantha Whipple goes off to study at Oxford, her reputation precedes her: she is a descendent of the famous Brontë family, and her father (lately perished in a fire) was a famous writer himself. With speculation rampant about a hidden, lucrative Brontë estate lurking somewhere in the world, Samantha—herself a kind of modern Jane Eyre—sets out to learn more about her mysterious family with help from her tutor, a Rochester figure with baggage of his own. ### _Jane Steele_  Putnam [By Lyndsay Faye](http://www.amazon.com/dp/0399169490/?tag=timecom-20) In this _Jane Eyre_ rewrite, the heroine breaks the fourth wall with a different confession: “Reader, I murdered him.” Jane Steele’s life runs in parallel to the other, more famous Jane, but this 19th-century governess is mad as hell and looking for vengeance. As she fights to win back the family home that was promised to her, she leaves a string of corpses in her wake. ### _Reader, I Married Him: Stories Inspired by Jane Eyre_  William Morrow [Edited by Tracy Chevalier](http://www.amazon.com/dp/0062447092/?tag=timecom-20) Top-tier writers like Tessa Hadley, Emma Donoghue and Lionel Shriver contribute stories inspired by Charlotte Brontë’s classic, from a tale of love in a Zambian village to a dystopian romance. Some imagine the story from the point of view of other characters, like Rochester and Grace Poole. ### _Nelly Dean: A Return to Wuthering Heights_  Pegasus Books [By Alison Case](http://www.amazon.com/dp/1605989614/?tag=timecom-20) The narrator of Emily Brontë’s novel returns, this time to tell her own story. The housekeeper of Wuthering Heights writes to Mr. Lockwood to expand on the details she previously shared with him about Cathy, Heathcliff and the gang. As her own life progresses, she becomes further entangled with the family and faces her own personal letdowns and tragedies. ### _Dear Emma_  Grand Central Publishing [By Katie Heaney](http://www.amazon.com/dp/1455534609/?tag=timecom-20) Jane Austen’s _Emma_ moves to a Midwestern college campus where our protagonist, Harriet, uses a pseudonym to write an advice column in the school paper. But like her namesake, it turns out she could use some advice herself. As Harriet finds herself in the middle of a love tangle (à la Frank Churchill and Jane Fairfax in the original), she has to decide whether or not to leverage the power of her column in her own favor. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"OpinionNewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/4291325/classic-novel-rewrites-austen-bronte/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/4291325/classic-novel-rewrites-austen-bronte/"},"headline":"A New Round of Classic Rewrites, From Austen to Brontë","datePublished":"2016-08-05T14:10:46.000Z","dateModified":"2026-05-11T05:00:08.008Z","description":"Eligible is only one of the revamps on bookshelves this year","url":"https://time.com/4291325/classic-novel-rewrites-austen-bronte/","keywords":["Books"],"thumbnailUrl":"","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Sarah Begley","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/sarah-begley/"}],"articleSection":"Ideas","image":[],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/ideas/","name":"Ideas"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/books/","name":"Books"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/4291325/classic-novel-rewrites-austen-bronte/","name":"A New Round of Classic Rewrites, From Austen to Brontë"}}]}] ```