Jane Austen in Portugal

Summary

Jane Austen’s reception history in Portugal has followed a slow path from Persuasion’s first translation in 1847 to modest fame in the 1940s and popularity in the 1990s following the success of the 1995 BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice. Her novels immediately influenced acclaimed Portuguese authors such as Júlio Dinis (1839–1871), who read them in English. More recently, as cinema and TV adaptations, or refractions, have turned the fictional universes and characters of Austen’s novels into an international pop culture phenomenon, online fandom (represented by, for example, the Jane Austen Portugal Society) has contributed to the continuation of her characters’ adventures through the writing of fan fiction in Portuguese. Austen’s novels and their screen adaptations have influenced Portuguese visual representation of 18th- and 19th-century England, mainly with regard to class, gender, and country-city relations. The 2016 film adaptation of her epistolary novella Lady Susan (c. 1794) changed the way readers and viewers interpret Austen’s (transgressive and ironic) female characters.