This article is an offshoot of a larger project, a monograph entitled Literature on Screen: An Overview (Palgrave).

Drawing on early writings on film adaptation, the article attempts to accounts for
- The long neglect of film adaptation in literary and film studies
- The reasons for Shakespeare as a source in early cinema
- The growing confidence in representing Shakespeare on screen.

This article considers the ultimately successful quest for film to be regarded as, not a mere imitator of literature, but the 'new literature', or as Allardyce Nicoll intimates in 1936, 'the new Shakespeare'.

This seemingly persistent conception of film as the new Shakespeare accounts, in part, for long-standing prejudicial attitudes to literature on screen, including cinematic appropriations of Shakespeare, over the last two centuries.

Contact: Deborah Cartmell - djc AT dmu.ac.uk