Question of the week: which book would you give the 50 Shades of Grey treatment?

23 July 2012 Rob Buckley TMINE 6 Comments

Northanger Abbey

So, if you’ve been living under a rock for a while, you won’t have heard about 50 Shades of Grey, in which a former Twilight fan fiction writer decides to make explicit the implicit subtext of Twilight by writing a BDSM book featuring, ahem, a lot of restraint – but absolutely no copyright-infringing characters from Stephanie Meyer’s original works. I’m assuming you don’t live under a rock though, otherwise your internet access would be rubbish and you wouldn’t be reading this, so I guess this is all old news to you.

What might be news is that copyright doesn’t last forever and an enterprising publisher – Total-E-Bound Publishing (no, really) – has decided to follow the path trod by EL James by taking classic works and characters from out-of-copyright fiction (Jane Eyre, Pride and Prejudice, Sherlock Holmes, et al) and filling them with sex scenes as part of its ‘Clandestine Classics‘ range. The first of the ebooks are due to be released on Sunday, so you too can read about Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff’s bondage sessions or how Holmes takes care of Watson’s sexual needs, in the comfort of your own Kindle while you’re on holiday. No one need know.

But today’s question is therefore the simple but limitless:

Which work of fiction, classic or otherwise, do you think should get a 50 Shades make-over and why? Or do you think it’s all a bit silly and/or distasteful?

Answers below or on your own blog, please?

Author

  • Rob Buckley

    I’m Rob Buckley, a journalist who writes for UK media magazines that most people have never heard of although you might have heard me on the podcast Lockdown Land or Radio 5 Live’s Saturday Edition or Afternoon Edition. I’ve edited Dreamwatch, Sprocket and Cambridge Film Festival Daily; been technical editor for TV producers magazine Televisual; reviewed films for the short-lived newspaper Cambridge Insider; written features for the even shorter-lived newspaper Soho Independent; and was regularly sarcastic about television on the blink-and-you-missed-it “web site for urban hedonists” The Tribe. Since going freelance, I've contributed to the likes of Broadcast, Total Content + Media, Action TV, Off The Telly, Action Network, TV Scoop and The Custard TV.

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