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.
Jane Austen in popular culture
The American author Amy Elizabeth Smart visited several Latin American countries in 2011 to see where Austen stood in that part of the world. Smart was at first concerned that a British author like Austen would not be popular in Guatemala, where most of the people are Maya Indians. But she found Austen fitted in well with the Maya, intensely family-oriented people who criticized her for not taking her own family with her to Guatemala, saying how could she possibly leave her parents behind in America. Smart discovered that Austen's picture of close-knit families in the English countryside was to the Maya comparable to their own existence in the Guatemalan countryside. When Smart asked her Guatemalan students if the story of "Pride and Prejudice" could take place in modern Guatemala, the unanimous answer was yes. Smart found her Guatemalan students related to "Pride and Prejudice" better than her American students as the general expectation in Guatemala is that a woman should be married by her early twenties, just as was the case in Regency England, whereas her American students have trouble understanding why Elizabeth Bennet was risking social disgrace by turning down two marriage proposals. Moreover, Smart's Guatemalan students found the subject of class prejudices in Regency England more compelling than her American students, with many also saying racial prejudices against the Maya by Guatemala's "Criollo" elite made them relate to Elizabeth Bennet's struggle for acceptance from the Hertfordshire elite. Smart reported class discussions in the United States about "Pride and Prejudice" did not automatically lead to the subject of racism while in Guatemala, her students always brought up the racism against the Maya when discussing Miss Bennet's struggle against the gentry and aristocracy of Hertfordshire. By contrast, in Paraguay, where the majority of the population are Guaraní Indians, Smart discovered that hardly anyone knew who Austen was, and much of her class was indifferent to the books. Smart suggested that the War of the Triple Alliance, which wiped out most of the Paraguayan population between 1864-70 with Paraguay going from 1 million to 200, 000 people, had left a grim, death-obsessed mentality in Paraguay where the macabre was celebrated and where Austen simply could not fit into.