Netflix is donating the novels behind Frankenstein and Heartstopper to 100 UK public libraries
Six novels, a hundred public libraries and an undisclosed cheque for the archives. Netflix has signed a national partnership with the British Library in the year Britain recorded its lowest ever appetite for reading, and the books going out to borrowers are ones the company has already filmed.
Florence Pugh spent Monday evening on a stage inside the British Library in London, next to Zoe Kazan, Christopher Abbott and Mike Faist, talking about a John Steinbeck novel published in 1952. It was not a premiere. It was the newest instalment of a programme Netflix and the Library have now turned into a formal national partnership, announced hours after the four of them left the stage.
The arrangement has three parts. Netflix is putting money into the British Library's literary conservation and archive work. It is donating collections of books already turned into Netflix films and series to 100 UK public libraries. And it is paying for a run of events about how books get to the screen, streamed out to libraries nationwide through the Library's Living Knowledge Network.
The collections are built around titles the company has adapted itself: Frankenstein, Pride and Prejudice, Heartstopper, One Day, The Thursday Murder Club and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Earlier evenings in the strand brought in the casts of Frankenstein, The Thursday Murder Club and The Seven Dials Mystery.
The number that explains the timing
2026 is the United Kingdom's National Year of Reading, and that campaign exists because of a measurable collapse. The National Literacy Trust's 2025 survey drew 114,970 responses from young people aged 8 to 18. Of them, 32.7% said they enjoyed reading in their free time — a 36% fall since the Trust first asked in 2005, and the lowest share it has recorded.
The same research makes a streaming service a plausible partner here rather than an awkward one. Reluctant readers do pick up books they have seen on screen: Nielsen BookData found 12% of the adult fiction bought by occasional readers was discovered through an adaptation or chosen because of one.
"Every great adaptation starts with a great story. We are proud to bring these stories to audiences all over the world, but we also know the experience does not have to end when the credits roll," said Anne Mensah, Netflix's vice president of content in the UK.
One title on the list Netflix already owns
Five of the six donated titles are books licensed for a single adaptation. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is not. Netflix bought the Roald Dahl Story Company outright in 2021, catalogue and all, so Dahl's books are company property rather than borrowed material. Shipping that one to 100 libraries is philanthropy and catalogue upkeep in the same gesture.
- The Thursday Murder Club — Chris Columbus directing Helen Mirren, Pierce Brosnan, Ben Kingsley and Celia Imrie, out 28 August 2025, from Richard Osman's first novel.
- Frankenstein — Guillermo del Toro's reading of Mary Shelley, with Oscar Isaac, Jacob Elordi and Mia Goth.
- East of Eden — seven episodes written by Zoe Kazan, Pugh as Cathy Ames, arriving 1 October 2026.
- Heartstopper — Alice Oseman's graphic novels, adapted for the screen by Oseman herself.
- One Day — David Nicholls's 2009 novel, rebuilt in 2024 as fourteen episodes rather than a film.
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The unglamorous half of the deal
Conservation funding is the part nobody will post about and probably the part that matters most. The British Library is a legal deposit library: it takes a copy of effectively everything published in the UK and Ireland. It is also still absorbing the ransomware attack of October 2023, which took its catalogue offline for months.
"We're helping to bring Netflix's exciting literary adaptations to new audiences across the U.K. via our Living Knowledge Network of public libraries," said Helen Schulte, the British Library's head of culture programmes, who thanked Netflix for "much needed philanthropic support for conservation."
Neither side has said how much money is involved, how long the partnership runs, or which 100 libraries get the boxes. Those are the questions a public institution usually answers on day one. What is fixed is the next date: East of Eden lands on 1 October, ten days after that stage.
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