Jane Austen
Austen's novels have resulted in sequels, prequels and adaptations of almost every type, from soft-core pornography to fantasy. From the 19th century, her family members published conclusions to her incomplete novels, and by 2000 there were over 100 printed adaptations. The first dramatic adaptation of Austen was published in 1895, Rosina Filippi's "Duologues and Scenes from the Novels of Jane Austen: Arranged and Adapted for Drawing-Room Performance", and Filippi was also responsible for the first professional stage adaptation, "The Bennets" (1901). The first film adaptation was the 1940 MGM production of "Pride and Prejudice" starring Laurence Olivier and Greer Garson. BBC television dramatisations since the 1970s have attempted to adhere meticulously to Austen's plots, characterisations and settings. The British critic Robert Irvine noted that in American film adaptations of Austen's novels, starting with the 1940 version of "Pride and Prejudice" and continuing on to today, class is subtly downplayed as the United States is officially an egalitarian nation where all people are equal and the society of Regency England depicted by Austen that is grounded in a hierarchy based upon the ownership of land and the antiquity of the family name is one that Americans cannot embrace in its entirety.
Elizabeth Aston
Edmondson's mother and grandmother were both writers published in South America and her father was a journalist. Despite being named after the Jane Austen character Elizabeth Bennet, Edmondson did not read an Austen novel until the age of thirteen, when she read "Pride and Prejudice". She quickly became hooked and read all six of the author's novels. In the late 1960s, Edmondson read English Language and Literature at, and graduated from, St Hilda's College, Oxford, where she studied Austen under the author's biographer Lord David Cecil. Edmondson described the "rigour" of her time at Oxford as "tremendously useful", as it allowed her to study Austen's contemporary era along with the language and background surrounding Austen's novels.