Literary Monster Mash-Up

Literary classics updated to include monsters.

Reporting on the forthcoming publication of “Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters,” (the follow-up to “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies,”) The Guardian’s Alison Flood observed:

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies has sold over 50,000 copies in the UK and 600,000 in the US since publication in April, sparking a new trend for what Quirk has dubbed the “literary monster mash-up.”

Other publishers have rushed to jump onto the bandwagon, and this autumn will see publication of both “Queen Victoria: Demon Hunter” – subtitled “She Loved Her Country; She Hated Demons” - and “I am Scrooge: A Zombie Story for Christmas.” “Marley was dead. Again,” says its publisher Orion. “Will the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future be able to stop the world from drowning under a top-hatted and crinolined zombie horde?”

Jason Rekulak, the editorial director at Quirk Books who commissioned “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies,” told Publisher’s Weekly:

“I’d always wanted to do a mash-up of a famous literary novel. … I thought it would be funny to do a ‘new and improved’ version of a classic that kids are forced to read in high school. So I made a list of classic novels and a second list of elements that could enhance these novels –pirates, robots, ninjas, monkeys and so forth. When I drew a line between ‘Pride and Prejudice’ and zombies, I knew I had my title and it was easy to envision how the book would work.”

Quirk Books revealed the next title in their “classics” series in this very silly video: