Canberra playwright Emma Wood has created a theatrical prequel to one of the most popular English novels, Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice.

In Mr Bennet's Bride, she explores the circumstances leading up to the marriage of Mr and Mrs Bennet, the ill-matched parents of Pride and Prejudice's heroine, Elizabeth.

"They struck me as a plain old couple – how did this happen?" Wood says.

She began researching late 18th-century England, a time and place during which marriage was as much a business transaction as a romantic affair, and set the action 25 years before Pride and Prejudice, in 1785 (assuming that the action of the novel took place in 1810, when it was published). She gave the couple (and some other characters) first names, none having been provided by Austen.

Mr James Bennet (played by James Chapman) is a bookish 28-year-old who's not much interested in women or the family estate and has an unhappy relationship with his father Robert (Lance Hawkins), who's never gotten over the fact that James' mother died giving birth to him, their only child. Eventually, with an entailment from the Collins family looming, Robert gives James an ultimatum: he has six months to get engaged and get serious and his father has an eligible bride in mind. But James, keen to spite his father, has his own ideas: he wants to choose his own wife. And Miss Emily Gardiner (Cassandra Wilkins), a pretty 17-year-old, catches his eye. But appearances – and manners – can be deceiving.

"It's an anti-rom-com – the audience knows this is not a romance that is going to last a lifetime."

Mr Bennet's Bride was first produced by Newcastle Theatre Company in its 2014 subscription season and became the third-biggest seller in the company's 57-year history.

"I felt like Jane Austen was my marketing manager, it sold so heavily before it had even opened," Wood says.

"It was very unusual for the company and for a new playwright."

She admits that she was to an extent riding on Austen's coat-tails and the ongoing fascination people have with Pride and Prejudice and its characters. Still, taking on such a beloved story had its perils – the weight of expectation was heavy – but she says the play was well received, even by members of the Jane Austen Society.

Wood is an English teacher at Narrabundah College and calls herself "a modest Jane Austen fan".

"Some people are passionate about Jane Austen … I haven't read all of her books."

Mr Bennet's Bride was written "for fun" and she offered it to the Newcastle company with which she had been involved as an actor.

Wood was born in Canberra and lived here until she was 21. She moved around a bit but ended up back here and acted in Canberra Repertory Society's production of Blithe Spirit last year.

She's written one other play, Water Child, about a couple struggling with fertility, and is working on a third.

Mr Bennet's Bride is on tour in a lightly revised version – "a very slight trim" – with most of the original cast repeating their roles. As well as a return season in Newcastle it will be seen in Canberra and then Chatswood, Sydney.