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The Lizzie Bennet Diaries

The Lizzie Bennet Diaries (LBD) is an American transmedia web series that adapts Jane Austen's 1813 novel Pride and Prejudice as a modern video blog, presented as the vlog of Lizzie Bennet, a 20-something graduate student. Developed and executive produced by Hank Green and Bernie Su and produced by Pemberley Digital, it ran on YouTube from April 2012 to March 2013 and won a Creative Arts Emmy for Original Interactive Program.1 • 2 • 3

Key factDetail
FormatModern vlog-style retelling of Pride and Prejudice, told primarily through Lizzie Bennet's video diary, supplemented by other platforms4
RunDebuted April 9, 2012; 100th and final diary episode, "The End," released March 28, 2013, roughly two episodes per week2
Transmedia scopeFour complementary YouTube channels, thirteen interconnected Twitter feeds, Tumblr posts, and Facebook profiles5
Main castAshley Clements (Lizzie), Laura Spencer (Jane), Mary Kate Wiles (Lydia), Julia Cho (Charlotte Lu), Daniel Vincent Gordh (William Darcy)2
AwardCreative Arts Emmy for Original Interactive Program3
MarketingWord-of-mouth only; the series gained hundreds of thousands of views and a loyal following6
AvailabilityNot currently streaming in the United States; available to buy in Canada on the Apple TV Store; IMDb rating 8.77

Spoilers

Premise and format

The series opens with "My Name Is Lizzie Bennet," in which Lizzie (Ashley Clements) begins a video blog as part of a graduate school project, introducing her best friend Charlotte Lu (Julia Cho) and her sisters Jane (Laura Spencer) and Lydia (Mary Kate Wiles). Over 100 episodes she documents the arrival of wealthy bachelors, her mother's campaign to marry off her daughters, and her own changing relationship with web-video magnate William Darcy (Daniel Vincent Gordh).2 Most videos show Lizzie speaking directly into a stationary camera, often coercing guests into costumes for comic reenactments of recent events; at one point Darcy himself appears in costume playing himself.8

The adaptation modernizes names and settings: Charles Bingley becomes Bing Lee (Christopher Sean), Georgiana Darcy becomes Gigi Darcy, and family businesses become online production companies such as Collins & Collins and Pemberley Digital. Mary Bennet and Kitty Bennet, removed from the core household, still appear in the narrative through social media.8 The largest changes concern the lead women: for Lizzie, Jane, and Charlotte, building a life independent of marriage is an essential and achievable goal, and Lydia's reaction to her scandal takes a different turn than in the novel.8 Bernie Su credited Hank Green's Vlogbrothers video "How to Vlog" as a strong influence on the show's format and style.8

Transmedia structure

The YouTube diary is only the core of a larger story world. The narrative eventually expanded to four complementary YouTube channels, thirteen interconnected Twitter feeds, Tumblr posts, Facebook profiles, and numerous interactions between characters and fans.5 Beyond Lizzie's 100 diary entries, the story included 10 "Questions and Answers" videos drawing on fan questions, seven videos by Charlotte's sister Maria, two in-world videos from Collins's company, six videos by Gigi Darcy documenting her brother's efforts to save Lydia's reputation, and 34 videos in a parallel series, The Lydia Bennet.2 The final piece of the story was not a video at all but a Twitter postscript with photos from a party the characters held to celebrate the diary's conclusion.2

Layered access. The design let viewers choose their depth of engagement. Newcomers could experience a complete narrative through Lizzie's 100 videos alone, and abridged playlists existed for viewers who wanted key episodes or the Lizzie-and-Darcy storyline only; committed fans could follow the feline Kitty Bennett on Twitter and treat the whole network as one story.2 Analysis of the Twitter material found that these diegetic paratexts (in-story material outside the main episodes, like tweets) expand on the events of the core YouTube text and provide context, but never resolution, to the plot; they are dependent on the core text while directing audiences from one platform to another, and their real-time release limited the longevity of the transmedia experience once the story ended.9

Fan interaction and influence

Fan participation was built into the production. Fans occupied the same online spaces as the characters and became characters themselves; the producers followed fan responses and incorporated them into the storyline, and fans' blogs and texts developed character arcs and moved the narrative, while producers entered fan spaces to discuss developments.1 The team created frequent opportunities for fan interaction and conversation, though there were no places for fans to affect the outcome of the story.10

This participation shaped the adaptation itself. Reacting directly and at once to what viewers called for, the show changed its characters and plots so that they matched the conviction among fans that Austen was a feminist and that her novels reflected that feminism.11 Scholars have described the resulting closeness as "narrative intimacy," following Sarah K. Day's term for texts that invite the reader to share the story as a space of disclosure; LBD used the participatory functions of YouTube, Twitter, and Tumblr, with Lizzie and Lydia as vulnerable narrators, to create a deeply immersive experience, and a mixed-methods survey of fans found lasting affective attachment to the narrative that reinforced their connection to Austen's novel.5

Lydia's rise. One unexpected effect was the audience's identification with Lydia Bennet. Because of the show's format, Lydia's voice and experiences became more central and were conveyed with greater sympathy than in prior adaptations, and many viewers immediately identified not with Lizzie but with Lydia, generating heated discussion in fan blogs, YouTube comments, and discussion boards.12 Lydia's 34-episode parallel vlog laid bare the vulnerabilities of a carefree character, and the A.V. Club credited the series with expanding the characters of Charlotte and Lydia and telling a story about female friendship and sisterhood.2

Reception and legacy

With only word-of-mouth marketing, the series gained hundreds of thousands of views, a loyal following, and its Emmy award.6 It was positively reviewed by internet culture and literature blogs including Wired, the Daily Dot, Nerd Machine, and The A.V. Club.13 The project's scale, 52 weeks of constant interaction, was described as unprecedented among narrative undertakings of its kind, and the quality of its storyscape earned the Creative Arts Emmy for Original Interactive Program.3

The series is widely credited with originating a format: a narrative told mainly through YouTube videos supposedly posted by the characters, supplemented by social media content, with the audience invited to interact with the characters as if they were real people. Its Emmy-recognized success encouraged both Pemberley Digital and independent creators to adopt the format in subsequent adaptations such as Welcome to Sanditon, Emma Approved, and Frankenstein MD.14 The story also extended into print: The Secret Diary of Lizzie Bennet was released on July 1, 2014, and The Epic Adventures of Lydia Bennet followed in fall 2015.5

Availability. The series is currently not available for streaming in the United States; after checking more than 1,600 services, JustWatch lists it only in Canada on the Apple TV Store, at CA$1.99 per episode, with an IMDb rating of 8.7.7 A five-year-anniversary re-run of the story as a curated transmedia experience on Facebook was organized by the official channel in 2017.15

References

  1. Jessica Seymour, Jenny Roth, and Monica Flegel (2015). "The Lizzie Bennet Diaries: Fan-creator interactions and new online storytelling." Australasian Journal of Popular Culture 4(2-3), 99-114.
  2. Myles McNutt (2014). "Webseries phenom The Lizzie Bennet Diaries made it to 100 entries (and beyond)." The A.V. Club.
  3. Networking narrative and the LBD storyscape, Colorado State University thesis (2014).
  4. Alexandra Fournier (2016). "My Name Is Lizzie Bennet: Successfully Adapting Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice (1813) for the Twenty-First Century with The Lizzie Bennet Diaries (2012-2013)." University of Waterloo thesis.
  5. Meredith Dabek (2021). "'Lizzie's story felt like home': Narrative intimacy in The Lizzie Bennet Diaries fandom." Journal of Fandom Studies 9(3), 301-319.
  6. Laura Jane Ramsburg (2014). "The Persistence of Austen in the 21st Century: A Reception History of The Lizzie Bennet Diaries." Hollins University thesis.
  7. The Lizzie Bennet Diaries streaming availability, JustWatch.
  8. Michael Andersen (2013). "How a Year of Video Blogging Brought Jane Austen to YouTube." Wired.
  9. "Transmedia storytelling, diegetic paratexts, and the limits of real time." Convergence (SAGE).
  10. Tepper, "Lizzie in Real Life: Social and Narrative Immersion Through Transmedia in The Lizzie Bennet Diaries," Film Matters.
  11. Shaina Gwynn Robbins (2016). "Faithful to the Fans: Audience Influence on The Lizzie Bennet Diaries and Transmedia Adaptation Fidelity." Brigham Young University thesis.
  12. Leah Benedict (2024). "'Always unguarded and often uncivil': A Case for Lydia in The Lizzie Bennet Diaries." ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts 14(1).
  13. The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, Know Your Meme.
  14. Izabela Rudnicka (2024). "New Transmedia Adaptations of Classic Literature." University of Manchester PhD thesis.
  15. The Lizzie Bennet Diaries official YouTube channel, five-year anniversary announcement.

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026

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The Lizzie Bennet Diaries

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