In the past few years, we’ve written three blog posts detailing some of the best literary adaptions done in a webseries format [1] [2] [3]. However, the literary inspired webseries community goes beyond just adapting some of your favorite classics. Have you ever imagined what your favorite classic authors would be like in the modern day? Or what they’d be like if they hung out together? These webseries have chosen not to adapt the works, but rather the lives of the authors.

blankverse

This series features William Shakespeare and his contemporaries as if they were Creative Writing students at a Bankside University in Canada in 2013. Told in a traditional format, it tells the friendships between him and Ben Johnson, Chris Marlowe, and Thomas Kyd. They develop as writers, fight, go on road trips and to parties, and generally get into college shenanigans. The series also features characters such as Richard Burbage, Elizabeth Tudor, and Mary Fleming.

Ben Johnson’s vlog

If, when you finish blankverse, you’re itching for more, make sure to check out the spin-off, Ben Johnson’s vlog. After the events of blankverse, no one is speaking to each other anymore, Ben’s parents pulled her out of her college course to focus on finishing high school, she’s depressed. It introduces Gabrielle Spencer (reimagined from Gabriel Spencer) and Thomas Nashe as they trick her into writing The Isle of the Dogs, reimagined here as mean and potentially slanderous memes of her friends.

The Writing Majors

Similar in concept to blankverse, this series imagines Emily Dickinson, Jane Austen, and Oscar Wilde as college roommates. They start a vlog together. They go to parties, play boardgames, write, and go through typical college experiences. You can expect to see guest appearances from William Shakespeare, Charlotte and Emily Brontë, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Jack Kerouac, and more.

Edgar Allen Poe’s Murder Mystery Invite-Only Casual Dinner Party/Gala for Friends Potluck

Looking for something a bit darker? Check out this series, nicknamed Poe Party, where Edgar Allen Poe and the ghost that haunts him, Lenore, throw a murder mystery party, at which people start really dying. Guests include his muse Annabelle Lee, her boyfriend Eddie Dantes, and some of Poe’s contemporaries: Emily Dickinson, Mary Shelley, Charlotte Brontë, Oscar Wild, George Eliot, Agatha Christie, Louisa May Alcott, Ernest Hemingway, HG Wells, and Fyodor Dostoevsky.

A Tell-Tale Vlog

Can’t get enough Poe? Or maybe you want something simpler and vlog style than Poe Party? Check out Edgar Allen Poe’s vlog, a prequel to the Poe Party action. Lenore haunts him as he tries to write, Annabelle Lee visits him on his birthday, and he buys Girl Scout cookies.

Words from Wilde

Perhaps you’d like a more accurate view of a single author’s life—who were their friends, what experiences did they go through? Words from Wilde is just that, a modernization of the actual life of Oscar Wilde. There’s love and heartbreak and betrayal and friendship—how could you go wrong?

Did we miss your favorite? Tell us in the comments below!