Miss Austen missed out

JANE Austen never had sex because she was too middleclass, according to TV historian Lucy Worsley.

Miss Worsley believes many women in Georgian Britain did have sex out of wedlock, but because Austen never married and was part of the “pseudo-gentry’’, becoming pregnant would have been “world-shattering’’.

Speaking at the Hay Festival, Miss Worsley said: “Did the spinster Jane Austen ever have sex with a man? The answer is almost certainly not.”

Austen regularly attended social gatherings but never found a husband and died aged 41 in 1817.