Fourth novel
acquired for the Austen Project, which pairs contemporary writers with Jane
Austen’s complete novels – to be published Autumn 2014
Alexander McCall Smith, best-known
for the multi-million-selling The
No.1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series, is today announced as the
author of The Austen Project’s Emma. Emma will be the third book
to be published as part of The Austen Project, which is teaming up authors of
global literary significance to reimagine Jane Austen’s novels for a new
generation of readers and Austen aficionados alike. The first book, Sense
and Sensibility by Joanna Trollope, is published on 24 October, and will be
followed by Val McDermid’s Northanger Abbey in spring 2014.
Emma will
be published by HarperCollins in autumn 2014, 199 years after Jane Austen’s Emma
came out (and in paperback in 2015, to celebrate the bicentenary). Curtis
Sittenfeld’s Pride and Prejudice will be published in autumn 2015.
Roger Cazalet, Associate Publisher
of HarperFiction, has acquired UK & Commonwealth rights from Caroline Walsh
at David Higham Associates.
J0anna Trollope, author of Sense
and Sensibility, said:
"It's wonderful to hear that
Alexander McCall Smith is going to take Emma on. Of all the great Austen
heroines, she is the one who will benefit most from being, as it were, handled
by a man, especially a man with such form in creating a heroine. I can't,
personally, wait to see his take on this novel - and this heroine".
Alexander McCall Smith comments:
‘Writing a contemporary version of
Emma is both a privilege and a real challenge. Not only is Emma one of the
finest novels in the English language, but it is possibly Jane Austen's most
thought-provoking and interesting book. I have already embarked on the writing
of my new version, set in twenty-first century England, and have become
thoroughly immersed in the story. Being asked to do this is like being asked to
eat a box of delicious chocolates.’
Kate Elton, HarperFiction Publisher
at HarperCollins, said:
‘We’re all absolutely thrilled to have signed up
Alexander McCall Smith for Emma, and I’m sure he will bring new readers
to Emma as well as delighting ardent Austen fans. The novels of Austen
and McCall Smith share some essential qualities which make them enduringly
popular with readers –gently poking fun at their characters’ ‘follies and
inconsistencies’ as Austen would have it, and a sense that people can learn
from this so that goodness wins out in the end – and it promises to be an
amazing pairing.’
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