Some of the best Austen adaptations are the most unfaithful

The new Emma film by Autumn de Wilde is the latest in a very long line of Austen adaptations, but by no means the strangest. Even in Austen’s lifetime there were pirated editions and translations of her books that took liberties with the originals, and the first illustrated editions raised howls of objection, too, at their ‘lamentable’ interference (as E.M. Forster thought) with the sacred text. Early stage versions all made free with ‘Divine Jane’ according to whim.

The very first motion picture of an Austen novel, Pride and Prejudice (1940), rather flaunted its carelessness about accuracy, transposing the action into the 1850s to accommodate the costume designer Edith Head’s preferences and softening Lady Catherine de Bourgh’s heart in the final scenes. Aldous Huxley was one of the scriptwriters on that film, but presumably not responsible for the line given to Darcy (played by Laurence Olivier): ‘Shall we not call it quits and start again?’ As the months went by, the director, Robert Leonard, made increasingly strange demands for tweaks to the plot, and Huxley was only just able to fight off a duel scene between Mr Bennet and Wickham.

There was a war on, Leonard might have answered, and anyway, what are national treasures for? It was Austenness he was channelling, not a work of literature.