Just curious, how mainstream do you think the Anne books and Emily books are these days?
This is a good question--I think on the whole, Anne will always kind of flirt with the mainstream. Anne with an E probably returned her to a more public consciousness, but I do think what's interesting about the Anne books is they manage to exist almost independently of their adaptations. Other classics they're often paired with, like Pride and Prejudice or Little Women tend to drag their movies around behind them in damaging ways (the amount of times I see quotations assigned to "Little Women by Louisa May Alcott" when they've CLEARLY been invented for the movies drives me up the wall.
But I think Anne gets to survive on her own terms. Yes, she's still misrepresented by the cottagecore and light academia girlies, but I think on the whole she manages to remain kind of publicly known while retaining her literary flavor.
I don't think Emily ever is or will be considered mainstream, which I'm very happy about. That said, in about 20 years I'd love to "rescue" her from obscurity by writing a three-season miniseries adaptation starring ONLY unknowns (except for Aunt Elizabeth and Aunt Ruth, who will be famous actresses of the Judi Dench caliber, and maybe Dean Priest if I could ever think of an actor who I think is capable of playing him) that will be the defining vision of the books for the modern generation.












