Sydney meeting
“Such different accounts of you”: Representations of Darcy on Screen
Harriet Jordan
NOTE: This meeting is also the JASA Annual General Meeting, so there will be various procedural matters before the talk begins.

When Colin Firth’s Mr Darcy emerged from a lake in 1995, membership of Jane Austen Societies across the world skyrocketed. Then, in 2005, Matthew Macfadyen’s Darcy flexed his hand. But even before Laurence Olivier’s Darcy picked up a bow and arrow in 1940, readers of Pride and Prejudice were entranced by Fitzwilliam Darcy, who wrote a letter in Austen’s novel published in over a hundred years earlier. This presentation will look at the five readily accessible screen adaptations of Pride and Prejudice (1940, 1967, 1980, 1995, and 2005), and occasionally at some of the looser adaptations and modernisations, to explore how each version draws on Austen’s character but refashions him to suit the conventions and audience expectations of the time, giving us new Darcys for new generations.

About the speaker: Harriet Jordan has a B.A. (Honours thesis on Jane Austen) and an M.Litt from the University of Sydney. She is currently Vice-President of JASA and runs a podcast called Reading Jane Austen.

NOTE: This meeting is also the JASA Annual General Meeting, so there will be various procedural matters before the talk begins.