“The more I thought about contrasting the repressive and restrictive nature of the Regency Era aristocracy with the zombie apocalypse, the funnier it was.”Īfter placing the entire original text in a Word document, Grahame-Smith spent six weeks writing new passages and altering the story. “The more I read the original book, the more I realized it was almost as if the book was written for this kind of treatment,” Grahame-Smith says. He made notes in the margins, looking for opportunities to “graft” zombies onto the “skin of the novel.” Grahame-Smith dwelled on that image as he reread Pride and Prejudice for the first time since high school. “The first thing that popped into my mind was this image of Lizzie Bennet, in a corset and restrictive clothing, doing kung fu.” He had had this epiphany where he thought, ‘What about adding zombies to Jane Austen?’” “One day, I’ll never forget it,” Grahame-Smith says in a phone interview with Paste, “ called me.
He wrote as a freelancer for Quirk Books to pay the bills, penning manuscripts with topics ranging from “the pornography industry to sleight of hand to presidential politics.” But Grahame-Smith was itching to break into fiction, despite the fact that the independent publishing house specialized in nonfiction at the time.Īfter turning down Grahame-Smith’s pitches for novels, his editor at Quirk, Jason Rekulak, suggested a genre-bending idea. Darcy.īefore the success of PPZ, however, Grahame-Smith was living in L.A.
Austen heroine Elizabeth Bennet fights the undead-in a corset, no less-and still finds time for verbal sparring with the iconic Mr. The book takes Jane Austen’s original novel and expands upon the story, adding a zombie plague throughout Regency England. Welcome to the mind of New York Times bestselling novelist Seth Grahame-Smith.Ĭelebrated as the author who reinvents traditional tales, Grahame-Smith catalyzed the classic literature/monster mash-up trend in 2009 with his debut novel, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. And the “three wise men” of the Bible moonlight as murderous thieves. President Abraham Lincoln hunts vampires.
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