Classic Women Authors’ Filmography

By | On November 23, 2016 | Updated December 31, 2022 | Comments (4)
Cimarron - film version - Edna Ferber

It’s truly remarkable how many film adaptations have been made from the works of classic women authors. This is just a sampling.

Make sure also to see the listing of movies about classic authors in Biographical Films Inspired by Women Authors’ Lives. The following is a selected list; make sure to let us know if we’ve left out anything important!

Louisa May Alcott

  • Little Women (1933, 1949, 1994, 2019, and others)
  • Little Men (1935, 1941, 1998)
  • The Inheritance (1997, 2004)
  • An Old Fashioned Thanksgiving (2008)

Jane Austen

  • Emma (1996, 1997, 2009, 2020)
  • Mansfield Park (1999, 2007)
  • Northanger Abbey (1986, 2007)
  • Persuasion (1995)
  • Pride and Prejudice (1940, 1996, 2006, and others)
  • Sanditon (2019)
  • Sense and Sensibility (1995, 1971, 1981)

Enid Bagnold

  • National Velvet (1944)
  • The Chalk Garden (1964)

Anne Brontë

  • The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (2008)

Charlotte Brontë

  • Jane Eyre (1943; also 1997, 2007, 2011, and others)

Emily Brontë

Pearl S. Buck

  • The Good Earth  (1937)
  • Dragon Seed  (1944)
  • Pavilion of Women  (2001)

Frances Hodgson Burnett

  • The Secret Garden (1949, 1975, 1993, and others)
  • A Little Princess (1939, 1995, and others)
  • Little Lord Fauntleroy (1936, 1995)

Vera Caspary (highly selected list)

  • Laura (1944) 
  • Bedelia (1946)
  • A Letter to Three Wives (1949)
  • Three Husbands (1950)
  • I Can Get It for You Wholesale (1950)
  • The Blue Gardenia (1953)

Willa Cather

  • O Pioneers! (1992)
  • My Antonia (1995)

Agatha Christie

  • Marple: The Classic Mysteries Collection (1930-1989)
  • And Then There Were None (1945)
  • Endless Night (1972)
  • Murder on the Orient Express (1974, 2017)
  • Death on the Nile (1978, 2020)
  • Seven Dials Mystery (1982)
  • The Mirror Crack’d (1980)
  • Evil Under the Sun (1982)
  • Miss Marple (1984-85)
  • Poirot: The Definitive Collection (1989)

Colette

  • Gigi (1958)
  • Cheri (2009)

Marguerite Duras

  • The Lover (1994)

Daphne Du Maurier

  • Jamaica Inn (1939)
  • The Birds (1963)
  • Rebecca (1940; also 2003, 2020, and others)
  • Hungry Hill  (1947)
  • The Scapegoat (1959, 2012)
  • Don’t Look Now (1973)
  • My Cousin Rachel (1952, 2017)
  • Frenchman’s Creek (2006, Masterpiece Theater)

Rachel Field

  • All This and Heaven Too (1940)

George Eliot

  • Daniel Deronda (2003)
  • Middlemarch (2005)

Edna Ferber

  • Cimarron (1931, 1960)
  • So Big (1932)
  • Saratoga Trunk (1945)
  • Show Boat (1936, 1951)
  • Giant (1956)

Miles Franklin

  • My Brilliant Career (1979)

Elizabeth Gaskell

  • North & South (2005)
  • Cranford (2007)
  • Cranford: Return to Cranford (2010)
  • Wives and Daughters (2002)

Charlotte Perkins Gilman

  • The Yellow Wallpaper (2012)

Rumer Godden

  • The River (1951)
  • Loss of Innocence (1961) – retitled from The Greengage Summer
  • In this House of Brede (1975)
  • The Peacock Spring (1996)
  • Black Narcissus (1946)

Lorraine Hansberry

  • A Raisin in the Sun (1961, 2008)

Lillian Hellman

  • Little Foxes (1941)
  • Children’s Hour (1961)

Patricia Highsmith

  • Strangers on a Train (1951)
  • The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999, 2020)
  • Ripley’s Game (2003)
  • Carol (adaptation of The Price of Salt, 2015)

Laura Z. Hobson

  • Gentleman’s Agreement (1947)

Fannie Hurst

  • Imitation of Life (1934, 1959)

Zora Neale Hurston

  • Their Eyes Were Watching God (2008)

Shirley Jackson

  • The Haunting (adaptation of The Haunting of Hill House, 1963, 1999)
  • The Haunting of Hill House (2018)
  • The Lottery (1996)
  • We Have Always Lived in the Castle (2019)

Madeleine L’Engle

  • A Wrinkle in Time (2011, 2018)

Mary McCarthy

  • The Group (1966/2009)

Carson McCullers

  • Member of the Wedding (1952)
  • The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (1968)
  • Ballad of the Sad Cafe (1991)

Grace Metalious

  • Peyton Place (1957)

Margaret Mitchell

  • Gone With the Wind (1939)

L.M. Montgomery

  • Anne of Green Gables (1934)
  • Anne of Green Gables Trilogy (1986, 1987, 2000)

Anaïs Nin

  • Delta of Venus (1995)

Flannery O’Connor

  • The Displaced Person (1977)

Mary O’Hara

  • My Friend Flicka (1943)

Tillie Olson

  • Tell Me a Riddle (1980)

Baroness Emma Orczy

  • Beau Brocade (1916)
  • The Laughing Cavalier (1917) 
  • The Elusive Pimpernel (1919) 
  • I Will Repay (1923)
  • Two Lovers (1928)
  • The Triumph of the Scarlet Pimpernel (1928)
  • The Scarlet Pimpernel (1934)
  • Spy of Napoleon (1936)
  • The Emperor’s Candlesticks (1937)
  • Return of the Scarlet Pimpernel  (1937)
  • The Elusive Pimpernel (1950)
  • The Scarlet Pimpernel (1982)

Sylvia Plath

  • The Bell Jar (1979)

Katherine Anne Porter

  • Ship of Fools (1965)

Beatrix Potter

  • The Beatrix Potter Collection (1992- BBC animated series)
  • The Tales of Beatrix Potter (2009)
  • Peter Rabbit (2018)

Ayn Rand

  • The Fountainhead (1949)
  • We the Living (1986)
  • Atlas Shrugged: Part One (2011)

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

  • The Yearling (1947)

Jean Rhys

  • Wide Sargasso Sea (1993, 2006)

Vita Sackville-West

  • All Passion Spent (2006)

Françoise Sagan

  • Bonjour Tristesse (1958)

Anna Sewell

  • Black Beauty (1999, 2002)

Margery Sharp

  • Cluny Brown (1946)
  • Julia Misbehaves  (film adaptation of The Nutmeg Tree, 1948)
  • The Forbidden Street (film adaptation of Britannia Mews, 1949)
  • The Rescuers (animated film, 1977)
  • The Rescuers Down Under (animated film, 1990)

Mary Shelley

  • Frankenstein (1931)
  • Frankenstein: The True Story (1973)
  • Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1994)
  • Frankenstein (2004)

Betty Smith

  • A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1945)

Dodie Smith

  • 101 Dalmatians (1961, 1996, 2000)
  • I Capture the Castle (2003)

Harriet Beecher Stowe

  • Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1927)

P.L. Travers

  • Mary Poppins (1964, 2018)
  • Mary Poppins Returns (2018)

Jean Webster

  • Daddy Long Legs (1919, 1955)

Edith Wharton

  • Age of Innocence (1943, 1993)
  • Ethan Frome (1993)
  • The House of Mirth (2000)

Kate Douglas Wiggin

  • Mother Carey’s Chickens(1938)
  • Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (1917 silent film; 1938)

Laura Ingalls Wilder

  • Little House on the Prairie Complete Series (1974-82)
  • Little House on the Prairie (2005)
  • Little House on the Prairie – Movie Boxed Set (1983)

Virginia Woolf

  • Orlando (1993)
  • Mrs. Dalloway (1998)
Categories: Film & Stage Adaptations of Classic Novels

4 Responses to “Classic Women Authors’ Filmography”

  1. Great website, thank-you! Maybe include films of: Alice Walker, The Colour Purple, 1985. Henry Handel Richardson, The Getting of Wisdom, 1978 (Australian, first published 1910, and as well known in Australia as My Brilliant Career by Miles Franklin)

    Reply

    • Thank you, Laura. I’ve added Henry Handel Richardson to our wish list of writers to cover. I only include deceased authors, which is why I don’t have Alice Walker up there. I’d love to learn more about HHR. I love My Brilliant Career (the book more than the film!) …

      Reply

  2. And probably much more…. Anne with an E is the Netflix new Anne of Green Gable. The Brontë sisters have more adaptation too. Thanks for your search in these reviews.

    Reply

    • You’re right, Louisa, I need to update this! I especially love the Brontës. But I so disliked Anne with an E, I might pretend I haven’t heard of it …

      Reply

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