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What will get young people reading classic literature? Better blurbs? Changes in the school curriculum? Flashy new biographies of dead authors? Or might it be pastel pink covers emblazoned with characters that look as if they just got back from Comic-Con?
Publisher Penguin Random House (PRH) is trying its luck with the latter: its youth imprint, Puffin, has announced a series of new editions of Jane Austen novels pitched at young romance readers. Although Austen’s stories will remain the same, the covers of these editions feature cartoonish illustrations of the characters, and are being marketed as “full of meet-cutes, missed connections and drama”. This description makes it sound as if these classic works are akin to the kind of contemporary romance novels that are hugely popular on TikTok with teenagers and young adults.
There have been successive attempts by publishers to “crack” BookTok (the nickname for TikTok content about books, which has the power to propel titles into bestseller lists) – you need only check their social media accounts to see the desperation to go viral. And it’s easy to see why, as publishers struggle to reach young people who studies show are increasingly uninterested in reading.
BookTok is unpredictable – an obscure 1995 dystopia and a Dostoevsky novella are among the titles it has turned into hits – and therefore hard to target. But the one thing we know for sure is that its users love romance – “spicy” novels by authors such as Colleen Hoover, Sarah J Maas and Emily Henry have become bestsellers thanks to their popularity on the app.
Each of the six Austen books in the “First Impressions” series, due out in March, will be introduced by a popular YA romance novelist. Boyfriend Material author Alexis Hall, who has written the foreword for Persuasion, describes Anne and Captain Wentworth as “legit freaking soulmates”, while author of the Maple Hills series Hannah Grace says of Sense and Sensibility’s Elinor: “I’d bet that her favourite Taylor Swift song would be This Is Me Trying.”
Unsurprisingly, criticism of these covers has abounded on platforms such as X and Reddit – with social media users claiming that “Tiktokifying” Austen was patronising younger audiences. The Booker-nominated author Brandon Taylor, while conceding that the idea could work in theory, said that the execution was “weird” in a thread on X. “They turned Fanny Price into a Targaryen,” he said of the Mansfield Park cover, which features an illustration of a woman who bears a striking resemblance to Emilia Clarke’s character in Game of Thrones.
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Beyond reaching untapped lovers of Austen’s work, these covers are likely to have another aim: to meet new bookshelf aesthetic trends, to be bought as an accessory rather than for reading. The once clothbound, gold-embossed look has been eclipsed – at least among young BookTok readers – by something closer to pick ‘n’ mix: neon colours and bubble, brush-lettered fonts with homogeneous artwork.
A desire for modernised classics isn’t new (nor is buying them for display purposes only), but the discomfort around these covers speaks to what may feel, to many, like an abrupt shift in what “modernisation” means in 2025. Alongside these covers, you can also find a similar treatment of classics elsewhere, such as in 2020 when the US retailer Barnes & Noble received backlash – and ultimately suspended – a series of classics with racially swapped characters on the covers. We have seen a boom in peppy Austen film adaptations, such as Dakota Johnson’s Persuasion (2022) and Anya Taylor-Joy’s Emma (2020) and there are even total reworkings made to appeal to the romance market, such as the “audio smut” company, Bloom Stories, which has rewritten Pride and Prejudice to make it “spicy”.
The impetus, then, for these covers makes sense. But will they actually sell? Heather Slater, manager of Forum Books in Northumberland, is sceptical. She says she regularly sells Austen titles to young readers looking for their “romance fix” but who are eager to expand beyond young adult romance novels. However, while she believes Austen novels do have the tropes many romance readers seek – “the gossiping of Emma, the desperate romantic Marianne Dashwood, the classic enemies to lovers story of Mr Darcy and Elizabeth” – she thinks the new covers “frame these novels in completely the wrong light”.
“They potentially give an impression to those who don’t realise they are actually classics that they have been given a rework to a present day setting,” she says.
“I think it’s pure snobbery to criticise the design in itself, but I would say that they’re a bit misleading for readers – romance books with those types of covers are a very different reading experience from Pride and Prejudice,” says book blogger Soniya Ganvir, one half of the influencer duo @browngirlsreadbooks. “It’s not going to be a spicy romance like Bridgerton so in the long term will it really capture the audience they’re aiming for?”
The new covers are “a little too obvious” says Jess White, the Liverpool-based writer of the popular Substack Jess White Reads Books. She says she can understand Penguin’s desire to reach audiences that aren’t reading classics with these new editions (which, in her opinion, “are actually really hideous”) but thinks the move being so clearly a trend-driven sales grab will turn readers off.
“Pandering” to readers of contemporary romance “is a little desperate”, she adds, “especially because there is such a difference between those kinds of texts and Austen … I’m not entirely sure that Austen’s novels need a sales boost as they’re always in print anyway, and have droves of readers.”
This is something Ganvir echoes: “Lots of excellent work, especially by women and racialised minorities doesn’t get even a fraction of the marketing spend that will have gone into this rebrand … books that, while great, are also outdated.”
But Caden Armstrong, the owner of the romance bookshop Book Lovers Bookshop in Edinburgh, is more optimistic about the rebrand. The shop’s staff “are utterly in love with these new editions”, they tell me. “They merge classic literature with a new colourful and unique art style that we believe will bring in a new wave of young Jane Austen fans.”
Saber Kahn, who works for the independent bookshop chain Topping Books, doesn’t see anything wrong with the new covers. “I don’t believe in gatekeeping of any sort and objecting to these feels like that and a bit precious. While the covers might look different, Jane’s voice hasn’t changed: always fresh and vibrant to read.”
