There is some
Persuasion stuff out there (I have written quite a bit, but not yet published it except as online fanfic). I have a
Persuasion-inspired story in an anthology to be published this autumn. The editor identified a small problem with the story that I was able to fix--not so much a problem as recognizing that not everyone who will read the anthology will have read
Persuasion, and I need to be careful about providing backstory! I find that odd, though I've received more than one comment that someone who read one of my stories will now read
Persuasion or
Northanger Abbey because they liked my story so much. I am both pleased and horrified by such comments.
A friend of mine once said that Henry Tilney doesn't get as much love as Mr. Darcy because there wasn't a film with a really hot actor playing him. This was before the film from a few years ago, which I didn't care for, but the actor who played Henry was okay.
There's a lot of drama and romance in S&S--Brandon's backstory, the Marianne/Willoughby romance--that I think lends itself to modern writers, who tend to introduce a great deal of "incident" into their Austen-inspired stories.
Emma has so many characters that it's easy to find a bit of backstory to make your own--the romance between Jane Fairfax and Frank Churchill, for instance, I think could be interesting territory to explore. And there you might have part of the reason for all the stories--Austen's novels are so rich, there is a lot of ground for authors to explore and play in. Unfortunately a lot of what's out there is just an excuse to get Darcy out of his kit, not interesting, deep explorations. We're definitely still waiting for our
Wide Sargasso Sea in the Austen fandom.
I just read a really good modern-set book that is influenced by MP but not a sequel or retelling--it's called
My Jane Austen Summer by Cindy Jones. It will be out next week (I have an ARC because I'll be reviewing it for my blog). It was really refreshing to read something based on MP!