Mashup (book)
As previously noted, the novel "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies" combines Jane Austen's classic 1813 novel "Pride and Prejudice" with elements of modern zombie fiction, crediting Austen as co-author. It was first published in April 2009 by Quirk Books and in October 2009 a Deluxe Edition was released, containing full-color images and additional zombie scenes.
Styles and themes of Jane Austen
Austen's novels raise and explore a variety of issues relating to money and property and the power they convey. For example, in "Pride and Prejudice", the plot revolves around the problems caused by primogeniture, as the Bennet property is entailed away from the Bennet daughters, and "Sense and Sensibility" questions the arbitrariness of property inheritance when the elderly Mr. Dashwood disinherits one side of his nephew's family because of his affection for a baby on the other. As Copeland explains, "[f]rom the focus of "Sense and Sensibility", "Pride and Prejudice", and "Northanger Abbey", where the single most significant economic problem for women is the lack of a fortune, Austen's works steadily engage women in more and more complex relationships to the economy. "Mansfield Park", "Emma", and "Persuasion", each in turn, move through an examination of the economy as measure of social morality, as agent of social disruption, [and] as source of national identity".
The novels discuss social status and social position in terms of "rank", "station" and "degree", and not in terms of "class" in the modern sense. Where the more modern concept of "class" is determined principally by productivity and income, and connotes conflict, the term "rank" focused on lineage and connoted harmony, stability and order. Austen generally portrays characters in the professional classes, such as the clergy and armed forces, most positively. For example, in "Mansfield Park", the heroine marries a clergyman, while in "Persuasion", the model marriage is that of Admiral and Mrs. Croft. Although Austen's novels suggest that characters should be judged by moral standards and not simply by social status, she always specifies their social positions, often (as with the Gardiners in "Pride and Prejudice") making it part of the earliest descriptions of a character. Austen outlines characters' social connections in detail. In "Emma" the reader is exposed to a wide spectrum of hierarchical society: the gentry, the near-gentry, professionals, artisans, servants and the undeserving poor. While social contact between these groups is frequent in a small village, transition between groups was uncommon. For example, Emma, a member of the gentry, dines with the Coles, "rising" members of the near-gentry, but she marries Knightley, a member of the gentry, who feels free to dine with Robert Martin, one of his tenant farmers.