On behalf of all Jane Austen fans who were on Tumblr in the 2010’s, I’d first like to thank you for being here. We are gathered to celebrate the short yet microcosmic life of the Literary Webseries.
I first caught wind of the fledgling genre in 2013, during my own time on the aforementioned fandom-based, microblogging platform, Tumblr. I joined Tumblr in 2011 to follow Harry Potter and Glee blogs. (Good taste, I know.) One moment I was scrolling through endless low-quality gifs of Darren Criss, and the next I was bombarded with several all-caps posts about tension and pining idiots, and omg, it’s finally happening.
As it turned out, Lizzie Bennet and Darcy were finally going to admit their feelings for each other, having both grown and learned as people! Episode #97 of The Lizzie Bennet Diaries had just dropped. Initially, this didn’t mean much to me. I had never read any Jane Austen. I hadn’t even seen Pride and Prejudice (2005) yet! Still, I watched the entire webseries over the next three days, catching up just in time to watch episode 98 on the day it was released. If you’ve never binged the series yourself, you can check out the first episode below.
The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, or, the LBD, for short, is a modernized retelling of Pride and Prejudice created by Bernie Su and Hank Green (brother of John Green, YA novelist and 2012 Tumblr royalty) and released episodically on Youtube. Heavily inspired by real-life vloggers who were gaining traction on the platform, The Lizzie Bennet Diaries was the sort of thing that could only ever have existed in the exact time and place that it did. The series was my introduction to Jane Austen, and renewed my love of period pieces and historical fiction in general.
LBD portrays Elizabeth Bennet (Lizzie) as a millennial grad student and beginner vlogger, struggling to move out of her parents’ house. The story was told exclusively through the characters’ (mostly Lizzie’s) personal vlogs, so the action was rarely shown directly, usually occurring off-screen. This meant that the audience (both in-universe and in reality) knew only what Lizzie told them about the events of the story. Over the course of the series, Lizzie is still forced to reckon with her own biases, but this time in front of an in-universe audience that she cultivated herself. It’s a surprisingly faithful adaptation of the book that uses a familiar story and characters to discuss modern concepts.
The reaction to the LBD was huge. The webseries garnered its own dedicated fanbase and even won an Emmy, making it the first online series to do so. After this, several Literary Webseries sprang up on Youtube. Not all of these series used Jane Austen as their jumping-off point, but most were retellings of classic literature, especially anything that had entered the public domain. All were unabashedly inspired by the LBD. While none of these series became quite as popular or successful as its predecessor (including the LBD’s own spinoffs), the genre thrived in its own niche space.
The accessibility of the Literary Webseries was one of its main draws. The content was free to watch on YouTube and was released “in real time,” so that the audience felt like they were watching a real vlogger chronicle their life. The low-key nature of the videos themselves also allowed fans without real budgets or resources to create their own similar series. Subject matter was easy to find, with more classic lit entering the public domain every year. The LBD team stuck with Austen for their next series, “Emma Approved,” while others retold the works of Shakespeare, Louisa May Alcott, J.M. Barrie, and more.
For more recommendations, check out my list of favorite Literary Webseries.
In the years following LBD’s release, vlogging itself began to change tonally, swapping out stationary storytime-style content for tightly edited documentary-style vlogs. This shift spelled problems for the genre, as these webseries often relied on their freedom to allow the action to occur offscreen. Additionally, Youtube’s love of quirky, relatable humor began to fall by the wayside in favor of honest, directed content.
Now, in the year 2022, the Literary Webseries genre is essentially dead, and I, for one, am still in mourning.
