This is all over the news: a writer took Jane Austen's books, turned them into proposals (changing names and places) and sent them into agents and publishers, who all summarily rejected them. (You can download the original article, including the query letter, here.)

Actually, it's not as simple a story as that, as Mags at AustenBlog points out. The query letter (which is all-important when looking for an agent or publisher) he sent was horrible, and most publishers probably didn't get beyond that. And most probably don't have time for a joke like this.

It was an inventive scheme, but probably doomed to fail based on his presentation.