Jane Austen (1775-1817) is closer to Shakespeare, in calendar time, than to us. Yet her world is much closer to ours than his -- which helps explain her astonishing ongoing popularity and why she's not far below the Bard in the number of film adaptations of her work.

People are divided between wanting the past to feel strange and wanting it to feel familiar, said Henry James, and every effort to film the proverbial "period piece" is challenged by the same paradox.

But in Austen's case, audiences can't seem to get enough and supply is growing to meet demand: Some 40 feature films and television shows or series have been based on her works. (No. 1 Shakespeare has 400 features alone, with Dickens not a close second.) Rankings aside, Austen is clearly a cult favorite, especially among critics and academics.

	Colm Hogan, Miramax Films In "Becoming Jane," Anne Hathaway's Jane Austen has eyes for James McAvoy's Tom Lefroy, left, and not Laurence Fox's Mr. Wisley. Click photo for larger image. Related review 'Becoming Jane'

But these days, she also has become a pop-culture phenomenon, her face and quotations available on everything from greeting cards and T-shirts to mousepads. "Masterpiece Theatre" on PBS will run adaptations of all six of Austen's novels next year, plus a new drama based on her life.

What can explain such enduring fascination and eternally fresh appeal?

"Like Shakespeare, she understood human nature, which never changes," says Joan Ray, University of Colorado English professor and longtime president of the Jane Austen Society of America. But Austen's universality comes equipped with specificity, as well.

"She stands for England," says Ray, citing the first superb movie version of "Pride and Prejudice" (1940), with Greer Garson and Laurence Olivier, among such other films of the period as "Mrs. Miniver" (1942, also starring Garson) intended to prod America into entering World War II "to save Jolly Old England."

Not least of the reasons why Austen's novels lend themselves so wonderfully to the screen is that she renders her stories largely in conversation. The dialogue comes ready-made. "I think she could've made great money today as a scriptwriter," says Ray. In which regard, she once wrote her sister Cassandra, "I will write only for money!"

Certainly not for fame. All of her books were published anonymously. Only after her death at age of 41 did her brother Henry make her authorship known.

"Becoming Jane," the film opening today, is a lush fantasy, paralleling and fabricating aspects of "Pride and Prejudice" into a quasi-biographical romance not unlike "Shakespeare in Love," whose writer-protagonist is likewise made the hero of a story he himself might have written. In Austen's real-life case, the romance didn't quite work out. But she was no Emily Dickinson stay-at-home spinster, "sending jars of jam on string out the window," says Ray. She had excellent social skills, attended dances and the theater and lived much like her beloved character Lizzie Bennet lived in "Pride and Prejudice."

"How could her novels ever seem remote?" asked Eudora Welty. "For one thing, the noise -- what a commotion comes out of their pages! The exuberance of her youthful characters is one of the unaging delights of her work ... their tireless relish of life."

Austen was very much "in touch with her generation" -- and with irony. It became a crucial part of the confidence taken for granted between her and her readers, derived from reading her chapters aloud to her own lively, opinionated family.

All her fiction required was a household in the country, a valuable neighbor and constant communication between the two, filled with news, arrivals and tumult. She had an ardent belief that everything worth knowing in life was basically in the family, the natural base of all relationships.

"Her world," wrote Welty, "is small in size but drawn exactly to scale. Yet it is not her world or her time, but her art, that is ever approachable."

Of 'Pride' and 'Sense'

At least a dozen films of "Pride and Prejudice" have materialized over the years, including five features and at least that many TV single or mini-series versions -- not counting "Bride & Prejudice," the 2004 Bollywood musical from India, or the "P&P"-inspired "Bridget Jones's Diary" of 2001, or (my personal favorite title offshoot) "Snide and Prejudice" (1997).

Best of the lot recently was the '05 remake with Keira Knightley wonderfully performing the tough role of Elizabeth. "P&P" purists quibbled over the cuts and accused director Joe Wright of turning it into "Wuthering Heights Lite." But this, and the popular 1995 BBC series rendering, go to the head of the class-conscious adaptations.

"Sense and Sensibility" has enjoyed fewer screen transfers (most on television), but director Ang Lee's 1995 feature was one of the best Austen adaptations ever. Kate Winslet made a stunning Marianne, while Alan Rickman imbued his Brandon character with just the right mix of sadness and tenderness. Emma Thompson was not only a fine sister to Winslet but won an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay. Everything went right in this one -- how could it not, given Austen's dialogue:

Mrs. Dashwood: Why so grave? You disapprove [Elinor's] choice?

Marianne: By no means. Edward is very amiable, but there is something wanting. He's too sedate ...

Mrs. D.: Elinor has not your feelings. His reserve suits her.

Marianne: Can the soul really be satisfied with such polite affections? To love is to burn -- to be on fire, like Juliet or Guinevere or Eloise ...

Mrs. Dashwood: They made rather pathetic ends, dear.

'Emma's' allure

Austen's "Emma" has been even more irresistible to filmmakers, chalking up seven feature realizations in English since 1932, one in French ("Si tu vas chez Emma," 1999) and a Japanese rendering called "Eikoku koi monogatari Emma" ("Victorian Romance Emma") in 2005. Five television versions exist, plus a (surprisingly good) Beverly Hills High School-set comedy, "Clueless," derived from it in 1995.

The 1996 "Emma," written and directed by Douglas McGrath, is the to-die-for one, with Gwyneth Paltrow in the title role. This wickedly high-spirited "Emma," co-starring Jeremy Northam and Alan Cumming, is delightful from start to finish.

So is the 1995 "Persuasion," with Amanda Root as Anne, who never recovers from her break with an impoverished sailor. It shines with some of the finest dialogue Austen ever penned.

The single best exchange in "Persuasion" relates not just to the fictional plot but to Austen's own life and great art -- and their endless appeal to moviegoers:

Captain Harville: Poor Phoebe would not have forgotten him so soon ...

Anne: It would not be in the nature of any woman who truly loved.

Captain: Do you claim that for your sex?

Anne: We do not forget you as soon as you forget us. ... You always have business of some sort or other to take you back into the world.

Captain: I won't allow it to be any more man's nature than women's to be inconstant or to forget those they have loved. I believe the reverse. ... I do not think I ever opened a book in my life which did not have something to say on women's fickleness.

Anne: But they were all written by men.