Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is a zombie/romantic parody novel written by Seth Grahame-Smith using Jane Austen’s classic Pride and Prejudice and combining zombie elements to the story. The story opens after a mysterious plague attacks the quiet village of Meryton, causing the dead to come back to live as zombies. Elizabeth Bennet is determined to end the zombie plague, but she is soon distracted by the arrival arrogant Mr. Darcy.
Quirk Books editor Jason Rekulak first developed the idea of the novel after reading The Art of War Against Fat, a mashup about weight loss musings and Sun Tzu’s The Art of War. He decided to do a mashup comparing a list of popular fan characters like ninjas, zombies, and vampires with a list of popular book such as War and Peace and Wuthering Heights. He then passed the project over to writer Seth Grahame-Smith. When he began writing the novel realized that the original text of Pride and Prejudice was “well-suited for a zombie horror story.”
The novel was published on April 1, 2009, with great reviews. The following week the book placed number three in the New York Times bestseller list. The success of the book led to other mash-ups including “Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter,” also written by Grahame-Smith.
The film adaptation premiered on February 5, 2016, starting Lily James, Sam Riley, and Matt Smith, playing the roles of Elizabeth Bennet, Mr. Darcy and Mr. Collins.
