This article appeared as "A Most Agreeable Reunion” in the Summer 2026 issue of Independent School.
Email, film sets, and online forums would have been unimaginable in Jane Austen’s day, but she would surely appreciate how they have helped her legacy endure. And how Lake Highland Preparatory School (FL) has been celebrating her work since the early days of the internet—when a high school literature project intersected with a movie producer.
In the mid-1990s, Lake Highland teachers encouraged students to explore the web’s “mysterious power” as part of an internet-based English class project. When students posted a message on a CompuServe literary forum: “Does anyone want to talk about the poet John Keats?” they had no idea what that post and a reply from Lindsay Doran, a Keats admirer and producer working on Ang Lee’s 1995 film version of Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility, would set in motion.
For more than four months, Doran emailed late at night from the UK film set. In addition to comments about Keats, she shared insights about filmmaking, storytelling, and how Austen’s characters move from page to screen—bringing a working movie production into the classroom long before virtual guest speakers were common.
As “Jane Austen fever” spread at Lake Highland that year, students wrote to cast members. One student received a handwritten letter from actor Hugh Grant. Teachers also exchanged notes with lead actress Emma Thompson, writing to her in the voice of her character, Elinor Dashwood—a playful bridge between literary analysis and performance.
Over time, the correspondence grew beyond a class project. Faculty member Brenda Walton and Doran developed a friendship, and Walton encouraged the producer to create a study guide to accompany the film. The exchange continued into June, when Doran invited the four teachers involved in the project to Salisbury, England, to observe a day of filming.
When the movie—later a Golden Globe winner—premiered in Orlando the following year, the English department organized a field trip for all 423 middle and upper school students (grades 7–12) to attend a private screening. When the credits rolled, students and faculty spotted a special acknowledgment of Lake Highland, cementing the experience in campus lore.
In the fall of 2025, nearly 30 years after that infamous internet encounter, the school marked the anniversary with a Homecoming Week reunion tea for the Sense and Sensibility cohort, bringing together nearly 50 alumni and both current and former faculty members. During December exam week, the library screened the film for students during study breaks.
Years later, that unlikely exchange still proves what Austen knew well: Stories—and relationships—have a way of lasting.
Photo: Three decades after a classroom encounter with the movie Sense and Sensibility, alumni return for a reunion tea celebrating a story—and a connection—that endured.
Photo credit: Josie Karash
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