It has sold more than 20 million copies since it was written two centuries ago and has had generations of schoolgirls swooning over the ultimate romantic hero. But the great unspoken background of Jane Austen's world is that both Mr Darcy and Mr Bingley in Pride and Prejudice got rich from the slave trade, says author Joanna Trollope. The novelist, speaking at the Festival of Literature in Dubai, dispelled the myth about Mr Darcy and Mr Bingley being the perfect men and described the 'very dark underbelly' to Austen's books. She said: 'Why does Mr Bingley in Pride and Prejudice have all this leisure to sort of drift between Netherfield and London? The great unspoken background of Jane Austen's world is that both Mr Darcy (pictured, Colin Firth) and Mr Bingley in Pride and Prejudice got rich from the slave trade, says author Joanna Trollope . 'He is a young man with means because of the slave trade. The slave trade is lightly touched upon in several of the novels but not very heavily. 'What built Pemberley? Pemberley was built, one imagines, on proceeds of the coal mines in Derbyshire. What was the life of an 18th century miner like? Not much fun.' Trollope, 71, decided to shatter the illusion surrounding Austen's heroes after being approached by publishers Harper Collins to write an updated version of Sense and Sensibility for the Austen Project in 2013. The series marked the 200-year anniversary of the author's most popular work, Pride and Prejudice. Pride and Prejudice describes how Mr Darcy earned £10,000 a year - more than £200,000 in modern money - while Mr Bingley inherited £100,000, the equivalent of £2 million today, and raked in another £5,000 a year, or £100,000 in modern money. But in her adaptation, Ms Trollope, whose reinvented characters say things like 'totes amazeballs', had to make one crucial change - she gave her protagonists jobs. 'The only huge change I had to make was people had to work,' she said at the festival. (on Saturday). 'In her novels, nobody works because the unspoken backdrop was the great commodity of the late 18th and early 19th century was sugar, which is not a million miles away from slavery. 'There is a very dark underbelly to these stories, which is why I still get so irritated when people insist on treating Jane Austen as if it was like the lid of a Quality Street tin, all sprig muslin and 'oh la sir'. 'There is none of that. It's tough stuff and clever women were doomed to a sort of infantilism because there was no career except marriage, which is why the women in her novels sabotage each other so disgracefully.' Despite her reservations about how Austen's heroes made their money, Ms Trollope said she ended the project thinking the author was 'an absolute genius'. She said: 'There she was, the second daughter of a not very distinguished or noisy country parson in Hampshire, and she was writing for her own pleasure, her own satisfaction. 'How did she know, out of some unbelievable instinct, that romantic love, class and money were going to be the stuff of fiction forever?' Ms Trollope, who said she 'stuck like paint' to Austen's characters in her own adaptation, quickly realised the romantic novelist did not believe in happy ever after. The only characters Austen did not send up in Sense and Sensibility were Elinor Dashwood and Colonel Brandon, the two most steady figures in the book, said Ms Trollope. She added: 'There is no such thing as happily ever after. That is why you can see in Jane Austen novels she loses interest the moment the proposal is sorted and X is plainly going to marry Y. 'I you read the final paragraphs of her six published novels, you will see she just says: 'Less of that and get on with it, not interested any more.' The adventure's over.' She also blamed Andrew Davies' BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice for sparking an obsession with Mr Darcy with the infamous scene by the lake, which did not exist in the book. The real Mr Darcy was 'stiff-necked and painfully shy' with 'not much humour', said Ms Trollope.
Joanna Trollope says it is the reason his job is never mentioned in novel . She wrote an updated version of Austen's Sense and Sensibility in 2013 . Says Mr Bingley and Mr Darcy reveal 'dark underbelly' to author's work . Oscar winner Colin Firth played Mr Darcy in the TV series aired in 1995 .