When Jane Austen published “Pride and Prejudice” in 1813, she could hardly have anticipated that her “light, and bright, and sparkling” novel would eventually become, arguably, the definitive template for the modern romantic comedy.
Countless novels, films, TV series, and other media have drawn on Austen’s original work for inspiration or as an outright template to create their own stories. One of the latest versions comes from Joanne Bischof DeWitt (Joanne Bischof before her 2023 wedding), whose recent release “The Heart of Bennet Hollow” transports the Austen story from early 19th-century England to the fictional New River, Virginia, in 1904.
