‘The reputation of no other English novelist rests so firmly on lack of style and sparkling dialogue,’ explained Professor Keith Sutherland. ‘But in the manuscript of ‘Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less’, the incomparable Archer rubbish is absent. Words tumble delightfully from the page. Whoever edited Archer’s works was responsible for transforming literary genius into dross.’

But Archer’s many fans are opposed to his new literary status. ‘We like the novels as they are,’ said Fay Nolan, an avid reader. ‘And we don’t want the likes of Professor Sutherland turning Jeffrey into another fucking James Joyce.’

‘And the mouth on some of them… I recently remonstrated with one such young woman, asking her what sort of a man she hopes to attract by singing Mozart arias in the middle of the street. ‘I know not, gentle sir,’ she replied, ‘but may he have a thousand pounds a year and a sizeable estate in Derbyshire!’ Of course I threw her arse in the cells, the cheeky bitch.’

As reports of unbearably repressed sexual tension continue to dominate the headlines, victim support groups are keen to warn girls against the dangers of being overly flighty and coquettish. ‘Vulnerable young girls are leaving themselves wide open to approaches from bounders, highly inappropriate suitors and some downright villainous knaves,’ said a representative from Cadwatch, who offer a full range of counseling services to any girl who has been grossly misled as to the true nature of a gentleman’s character.

‘Every day we field calls from girls who have brought shame and disgrace upon their family name and quite ruined their sisters’ chances of making good marriages, purely on the promise of a moonlit elopement and a new bonnet.’

But many are quick to lay blame with education’s obsession with bombarding impressionable girls with images of gentler times and quaint manners. ‘It’s this stuff they read at school,’ said one mother, who is on her final warning from social services for allowing her teenage daughter to promenade unchaperoned in the Woking Peacock Centre. ‘All their mates are reading it and suddenly they’re off down Bluewater for the latest tulle-tucker. But it could be worse I suppose. On some of the streets round here, you’re lucky to go a few feet without getting caught up in a sabre duel, so we’re grateful for small mercies.’

‘Previous adaptations have developed the work slowly, building up expectations and tensions gradually and leaving hearts fluttering for anyone who was prepared to invest their time on it,’ said ITV head of production Grant Stainesworth, ‘but in today’s world we think we can tantalise and delight our audience, every night, just after a thirty minute ad for l’Oreal, with explosive yet compact scenes of sexual suggestion and aspiration.’

‘Every night,’ he promised, ‘for eight months, it’ll be like D’Arcy coming out of the lake for the first time. Except this time he’ll be clutching a Gilette razor and rubbing his smooth chin towards the camera.’

In the week that ITV launched ‘Lost in Austen’ and another American travel writer published ‘In Austen’s Footsteps’, a government trade and industry spokesman confirmed that Britain’s GDP is now more dependent than ever on stories about modern single women who feel a real affinity with Elizabeth Bennett or Elinor Dashwood. ‘Although to be honest, it’s usually just Elizabeth Bennett, because most of them only read a bit of Pride and Prejudice, then watch the TV adaptation and then go on and on about really loving Austen.’

As well as film adaptations, television dramas and derivative novels, the Austen industry also encompasses thousands of book clubs, heritage walks and country houses. ‘Parents take their teenage daughters on these tours,’ explained the owner of one such Nineteenth Century estate in ‘Austen country’, North Wales, ‘because they feel that it is encouraging them to engage with classic literature.’

The irony is that original manuscript of Jane Austen’s ‘Emma’ was discovered in a Hampshire attic earlier this year, revealing the first draft of the classic comedy of manners to be packed with foul mouthed men and women, hell-bent on getting drunk, scoring drugs and having sex.

‘The publishers made her cut out all the racy stuff and so the whole charming English comedy of manners thing was never Austen’s intention,’ explained one archivist at the British library. ‘There’s a brilliant bit where Mr Knightley is out of his head on cider and crack, and he smashes Frank Churchill’s face into the stable door and Emma is so turned on she gives him a bj with Mr Churchill just lying there unconscious in a pool of blood. Basically all of Austen’s heroines just wanted instant sexual gratification with whoever they met. Except of course, Austen wrote ‘whomever’. That’s what we love about her.’