BBC drama depicts Jane Austen a serial flirt

By Avril Ormsby LONDON (Reuters) - Viewers who think novelist Jane Austen was a country mouse may be shocked by a new television drama which depicts her flirting, suffering from hangovers and reneging on the acceptance of a marriage proposal.

But the scriptwriter of "Miss Austen Regrets" believes anybody who has read her books will recognise her as a woman of brilliant wit who knew her way around society.

"I am not dishing the dirt," said Gwyneth Hughes.

"Some people might not like to see Austen with a hangover, but I am not out to shock."

But Helen Lefroy, a distant relative of Tom Lefroy, a friend of Austen's, said the novelist may have been a livewire "but she wasn't wild".

"We know so little of her, but I do not think she was looking for marriage: she was looking to understand the relationship between men and women, which she used in her novels so well."

The script for the BBC production, to be shown on Sunday, is based on the 100-plus surviving letters by Austen to her devoted sister Cassandra and to her young niece, Fanny. Austen, who wrote the classics "Pride and Prejudice" and "Sense and Sensibility", never found her own Mr Darcy.

She is most likely to have died a virgin, after living in a small house with her mother and Cassandra.

But the drama features a number of romances as well as a proposal of marriage, which the 27-year-old Austen initially accepted and then turned down after a night's reflection.