Daily Junction.mobi portalNews · September 20, 2026 · The Conversation · 5 min
From Eliza Haywood to Anne Radcliffe, there are other great 18-century writers whose work would be great on screen.
<div class="theconversation-article-body"> <figure> <img alt="Charlotte Lenox, Frances Burney and Eliza Haywood" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/760775/original/file-20260918-50-byd8mm.png?ixlib=rb-4.1.1&rect=0%2C37%2C2000%2C1125&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" /> <figcaption> Charlotte Lenox, Frances Burney and Eliza Haywood are three other female writers whose work is ripe for adaptation. <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frances_Burney#/media/File:Frances_d'Arblay_('Fanny_Burney')_by_Edward_Francisco_Burney.jpg">Wikimedia </a></span> </figcaption> </figure>
<span><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/amy-louise-blaney-586071">Amy Louise Blaney</a>, <em><a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/university-of-wolverhampton-1002">University of Wolverhampton</a></em></span>
<p>With new adaptations of Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility arriving on our screens this autumn, television’s long-running love affair with <a href="https://theconversation.com/topics/jane-austen-15269">Jane Austen</a> shows little sign of abating. But there are other 18th-century writers with whom TV could have a wonderful love affair, too. </p>
<p>One writes about a woman who disguises herself as four different people to pursue the same man. Another writes about a woman becomes so obsessed with romance novels that she struggles to distinguish fiction from reality. In other’s work, a young heroine navigates the dangers of high society while a sheltered young woman uncovers dark family secrets in a remote castle.</p>
<p>Don’t these sound like pitches developed for a contemporary streaming platform? Although largely forgotten today, they contain many of the ingredients that contemporary television audiences love. Here are romance, scandal, mistaken identities, unreliable narrators, gothic suspense and sharp social commentary. Indeed, some of the 18th-century’s most influential novels seem almost uncannily designed for 21st-century screens. Here are five such tales. </p>
<h2>1. <a href="https://uk.bookshop.org/a/15793/9781551115245">Fantomina: or, Love in a Maze</a> (1725) by Eliza Haywood</h2>
<figure class="align-left "> <img alt="Book cover" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/760769/original/file-20260918-50-ojhlzy.jpg?ixlib=rb-4.1.1&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/760769/original/file-20260918-50-ojhlzy.jpg?ixlib=rb-4.1.1&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=928&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/760769/original/file-20260918-50-ojhlzy.jpg?ixlib=rb-4.1.1&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=928&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/760769/original/file-20260918-50-ojhlzy.jpg?ixlib=rb-4.1.1&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=928&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/760769/original/file-20260918-50-ojhlzy.jpg?ixlib=rb-4.1.1&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1166&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/760769/original/file-20260918-50-ojhlzy.jpg?ixlib=rb-4.1.1&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1166&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/760769/original/file-20260918-50-ojhlzy.jpg?ixlib=rb-4.1.1&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1166&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"> <figcaption> <span class="caption"></span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Broadview Press</span></span> </figcaption> </figure>
<p>The titular protagonist of Haywood’s best-known work is a young woman who repeatedly reinvents herself through a series of disguises to sustain a relationship with an unsuspecting lover. Long before Tinder profiles or TikTok personas, Haywood understood that <a href="https://theconversation.com/let-performative-males-be-gender-has-always-been-a-performance-and-our-need-for-authenticity-is-bad-for-us-263478">attraction often depends on performance and self-presentation</a>. </p>
<p>In a recognisably contemporary act of self-fashioning, each disguise grants Fantomina access to forms of freedom, mobility and sexual agency denied to respectable 18th-century women. It is only by shedding her “respectable” identity and becoming anonymous that Fantomina is able explore the freedoms offered by public life. </p>
<p>In this respect, the novella’s interest in reinvention anticipates everything from online pseudonyms to the carefully curated selves of dating apps, while its suggestion that women are judged differently depending on how and where they appear in public feels strikingly relevant in an era of social media, personal branding, and constant visibility.</p>
<h2>2. <a href="https://uk.bookshop.org/a/15793/9780199536498">Pamela: or, Virtue Rewarded</a> (1740) by Samuel Richardson</h2>
<figure class="align-right "> <img alt="Book Cover" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/760770/original/file-20260918-50-5ztch3.jpg?ixlib=rb-4.1.1&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/760770/original/file-20260918-50-5ztch3.jpg?ixlib=rb-4.1.1&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=911&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/760770/original/file-20260918-50-5ztch3.jpg?ixlib=rb-4.1.1&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=911&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/760770/original/file-20260918-50-5ztch3.jpg?ixlib=rb-4.1.1&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=911&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/760770/original/file-20260918-50-5ztch3.jpg?ixlib=rb-4.1.1&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1145&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/760770/original/file-20260918-50-5ztch3.jpg?ixlib=rb-4.1.1&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1145&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/760770/original/file-20260918-50-5ztch3.jpg?ixlib=rb-4.1.1&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1145&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"> <figcaption> <span class="caption"></span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Oxford World's Classics</span></span> </figcaption> </figure>
<p>Few mid-century novels generated more controversy or excitement than Pamela, the story of a young servant girl who resists the unwanted advances of her wealthy employer. Centred on questions of power, class, precarity and consent that remain highly relevant today, the novel <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199566747.013.010">sparked fierce debate amongst its first readers</a> and spawned several imitative responses. </p>
<p>Long before the #MeToo movement forced a wider reckoning with how economic and social authority can be abused, Richardson’s bestselling novel was asking pertinent questions about the options available to women when the men pursuing them also hold power over their futures. The novel’s conclusion can feel deeply troubling to modern readers. Yet it is precisely its ambiguity — and <a href="https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1237&context=abo">the difficult conversations it can provoke</a> — that would make Pamela such a compelling adaptation today.</p>
<h2>3. <a href="https://uk.bookshop.org/a/15793/9780199540242">The Female Quixote, or, The Adventures of Arabella </a> (1752) by Charlotte Lennox</h2>
<figure class="align-left "> <img alt="Book cover" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/760771/original/file-20260918-50-dymklz.jpg?ixlib=rb-4.1.1&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/760771/original/file-20260918-50-dymklz.jpg?ixlib=rb-4.1.1&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=912&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/760771/original/file-20260918-50-dymklz.jpg?ixlib=rb-4.1.1&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=912&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/760771/original/file-20260918-50-dymklz.jpg?ixlib=rb-4.1.1&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=912&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/760771/original/file-20260918-50-dymklz.jpg?ixlib=rb-4.1.1&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1146&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/760771/original/file-20260918-50-dymklz.jpg?ixlib=rb-4.1.1&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1146&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/760771/original/file-20260918-50-dymklz.jpg?ixlib=rb-4.1.1&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1146&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"> <figcaption> <span class="caption"></span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Oxford World's Classics</span></span> </figcaption> </figure>
<p>Often read as a satire on the dangers of excessive reading, Lennox’s novel feels uncannily attuned to contemporary debates about BookTok, fandom and so-called <a href="https://doi.org/10.5040/9798881847616.ch-014">“book boyfriends”</a>: fictional characters, usually male, who readers wish existed in real life. Its heroine Arabella’s habit of interpreting real life through the conventions of romance recalls contemporary anxieties about the influence of popular fiction on readers, <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/womens-reading-in-britain-17501835/dangerous-recreation-women-and-novelreading/6E5A39F31600F5A83E7341FB2C918EB6">particularly women</a>. </p>
![[View image]](/img/tc-stop-adapting-jane-austen-five-other-18th-century-writers-perfect-for-the-screen.jpg){kind=link}