adding dollops of "ultraviolent zombie mayhem" to Austen's classic love story. "Zombies" – billed as 85 percent Austen's original text and 15 percent brand-new blood and guts – has become a best-seller since it was published earlier this year, with 750,000 copies in print. There's a movie in the works. And it has spawned a monster – or, more accurately, a slew of literary monster mash-ups."

Her entire life was spent with what seems to have been an exceptionally lovable and affectionate family. It is surprising , then, that in her novels pictures of family happiness are far rarer than the opposite: her characters’ affections for their relatives are highly selective. The friendship between Jane and Elizabeth Bennet in “Pride and Prejudice” is as perfect as that between Janeher sexual fear are gradually dispelled under the impact of reality, the stimulus of Emma's own honesty and self-awareness, and the abreactive effect of her effort to act out her fantasies. In Emma's case, the fantasy is essentially that she can control the world by planning other people's lives, especially their marriages. The essential movement of the novel, then, is from infantile narcissism and a posture of omnipotence, denial of instinctual needs, and adolescence to an emotional and psychological maturity as Emma discovers and acts on her love for Mr. Knightley—an act in accord with both psychic and external reality"

Jane Austen is as severe to her heroes as she is just to her unsympathetic characters. Mr. Bennet, one of the most lovable creations in all fiction, is nonetheless