And it is only to be used in connection with reviews of The Independence of Miss Mary Bennet. The Editrix Hath Spoken.*

We’ve been following all the excitement about Pride and Prejudice and Zombies with much bemusement. In fact, there’s been so much interest that we heard from Quirk Books today that they’re moving up the publication date to April. There haven’t been a whole lot of comments on the various posts we’ve made about it here, but they’ve been mostly positive, or at least taking a wait-and-see attitude; there are even a few Janeite zombie fans who are pretty excited about it. We’ve seen a few less positive comments around the ‘nets, but as in most things in the Janeite diaspora, we’re not speaking with one voice; opinions are all over the spectrum, because we Janeites really don’t march in lockstep.

However, Seth Grahame-Smith, the author, seems to see it as an “us vs. them” situation: people either love it or hate it, and clearly the haters are the Uptight Purist Janeite types. So in the interest of fellowship among authors (especially those with the same publisher), we would like to gently point out to Mr. Grahame-Smith that the Janeites are his audience, too, and to marginalize us or dismiss us en masse as Uptight Purist Janeites would be to invite us to ask ourselves: What Would Jane Do?

Since you think P&P is about “uptight aristocrats”, we’ll give you a hint: she would probably, well, eat your brain.

(By the bye, we’ll have a few copies of P&P and Zombies to give away on AustenBlog, so stay tuned).

Thanks to Alert Janeite Laurel Ann for the link.

*Which reminds us, PaperCuts–“Jane Austen Ate My Brain” is OUR band name. You back off, too!

ETA: Mr. Grahame-Smith has sent us a little valentine.