By Grace Gooda
Ask any bookseller their opinion on the latest classic literature adaptation and they will always be ready to express their outrage (or excitement).
In 2022, it was anger at whatever SparkNotes version of Jane Austen’s Persuasion the producers skimmed to deliver their fourth wall-breaking film, starring Dakota Johnson as a wine-wielding Anne Elliot.
Right now, it’s Wuthering Heights. It’s all Wuthering Heights. It’s ‘go and watch the trailer on your lunchbreak and report back’. It’s ordering in multiple copies, from thick Popular Penguins to editions with sprayed edges and cloth binding.
It’s realising that, although the book has existed for 178 years and the Bronte sisters created some of Western literature’s most influential pieces, you still haven’t read any of their books.
I decided to start with Jane Eyre (to read Wuthering Heights after the trailer was released was to jump on a bandwagon we booksellers feel above).
I won’t recount the book’s plot: you know it and I know it. Except, I didn’t know it, having somehow avoided a lifetime of spoilers.
While Jane Eyre has dozens of adaptations, is featured on the Victorian Year 12 curriculum, and even Rachel Green from Friends has studied it, my experience reading it was as fresh as those picking it up for the first time in 1847.
When you finally read a classic for the first time Image courtesy of Pinterest
Spoiler alert: it isn’t 1847
It is 2026 (already). In 2026, what you do in real life becomes your online life as well.
We have cookies to thank for this. You might be rolling your eyes at a bookseller attempting to explain the complexities of the algorithm, but for those not in the know, when I searched whether my bookshop had Jane Eyre in stock, the cookies on that website attached an interest in Jane Eyre to my internet ID.
Clicking on a product on one website turns it into an ad on another, such as Instagram. Being a naïve booklover, I interacted with this ad (I like to read comments OK!)
The more book content I consumed the more Instagram started feeding me anything to do with classic literature.
In came unavoidable memes about how Jane Austen refused to fix men, while Mary Shelley opted to make them.
Tumblr thread discussing classic literature. Screenshot courtesy of Reddit
For some, the way the algorithm works means becoming trapped in an echo chamber of far-right rhetoric, unable to escape an algorithm which churns out racist and xenophobic content.
For me, it became slow-motion videos of women born in the same year as me, running through fields in historically accurate dress, pretending to be Jane Eyre. The internet is fun, isn’t it?
When you know what happened in Pride and Prejudice and Frankenstein, content and references like this make you feel like part of a club. A club full of smart people who get it.
The club’s price of entry? Spoilers.
Jess Tacaks, @paperboundjess, is a Bookstagramer whose account thrives on this kind of content. Among earnest recommendations and reviews of new releases, her account contains reels and memes blending viral clips with the plot points of classic literature.
Her most successful post has amassed over 1 million views.
According to Jess, this content performs better than her book reviews. Although her love of Bookstagram stems from reviewing new releases, ‘the memes about classic lit, especially Jane Austen, go beyond to non-bookish accounts.’
The proof is in the numbers: when Jess posts about classics, people respond. It’s a cult of ‘if you know, you know,’ and those who know will watch, like, share and comment. As a creator this has encouraged Jess to make more content of this nature, even though she says, ‘I love memes, but I wanted my focus to be reviews.’
Jess and I share a suspicion: ‘I also secretly wonder if it’s a bit of a flex to understand the joke. When people repost these memes, they are sharing something funny [while] also letting their followers know they have read this classic.’
But what if you haven’t read this classic?
590-page story short: I had Jane Eyre spoiled. All it took was a quick and accidental glance at a video which lay among my endless scroll, somewhere between Trump mispronouncing acetaminophen and an AI orphaned cat.
Anyone who lived through the release of Avengers Endgame knows how to avoid spoilers. Yet it becomes a whole lot harder when the algorithm tailors what we view, by tracking exactly what we’re reading, then rewarding creators like Jess for content that explicitly discusses the same book.
Dramatically, it felt like a 178-year wait had been ruined. Yet my frustration didn’t feel valid. Are some things beyond spoilers?
For Jess, some things are. She doesn’t put spoiler alerts for anything over 100 years old. There’s a level of expected cultural knowledge in the social media realm. It only takes a few minutes on the algorithm to find more than just teasers about films, shows, and books alike.
For ‘Bookstagram’ content, the better the spoiler, the greater the engagement. Image: Jess Tacaks, used with permission
When it comes to film clips posted online, the top comment will often be from someone requesting other users to ‘spoil this for me please.’
The clip has piqued their interest, but not enough to sit down for two hours. This suggests our inherent need to be in the know, to get the joke, to talk about the plot at dinner, but not put in the time.
What does this mean for our reading habits?
The research suggests that unspoiled stories are more fun; we are unlikely to engage properly with a plot we already know. When it comes to reading, this might mean that the more plot-based content we see online, the less likely we are to go on to read or buy the book.
Lucie Dess is the marketing coordinator at Readings in Melbourne. Like Jess, Lucie acknowledges just how helpful using the plot of a classic can be to bring the title to a brand-new audience.
‘I would definitely use the plot to advertise a classic but mostly describe the vibes and tropes, like Wuthering Heights is dark romance, or Pride and Prejudice is grumpy/sunshine.’
When it comes to marketing for younger readers, Lucie explains that it’s these very tropes that attract Gen Z. Sales can also have more to do with collecting books than being surprised by the plot.
‘Classics are often some of the prettiest books to collect and look amazing as a group on the shelf. Plus, classics can be really affordable…a budget friendly way to fill your bookshelves.’
According to Lucie, spoiling a plot does not help sales. Perhaps, like the Instagram commentors who request movie spoilers so they don’t have to go and watch it, those of us having classic literature spoiled aren’t running off to buy the book.
While Readings’ marketing content avoids spoilers, Lucie knows that ‘if a reader really wants to know what happens, they’ll easily be able to find it elsewhere.’
This ‘elsewhere’ is becoming increasingly difficult to avoid. While classics have the power to sell themselves (they are classics for a reason) it seems we are moving towards a world where a 30 second video is enough to satisfy our need to know what happened in history’s most famous books.
So why even bother reading the classics?
I sound like an old woman, shaking her walking stick at those pesky youths. But book content creators are doing so much to make people want to read books and point them towards new titles and genres they love. This doesn’t seem like their fault.
Instead, perhaps it’s our need as readers to constantly prove ourselves to be ‘in the know’, forcing creators to produce more spoiler-based content.
English teachers worldwide will tell you that spoilers don’t matter, and works like Jane Eyre can never be fully appreciated without reading all 590 pages.
All this to say, to preserve your reading experience, perhaps don’t scroll too far. Spoilers will be waiting for you when you get back.
Grace Gooda is a writer and bookseller from Melbourne. Currently studying a Master of Journalism at the University of Melbourne, she has written for The Junction, Demure Magazine, The Citizen and Right Now. She regularly writes book reviews for Readings and has contributed to their blog.
Cover image: Photo by Sinitta Leunen on Unsplash
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