London ? Writer Mary Wesley, who published her first novel when she was 70 and went on to produce a string of slightly racy best sellers, has died at age 90.

Wesley, whose examinations of middle-class values have been described as “like Jane Austen with sex,” died Monday at her home in Totnes, rector Nicholas Martin said.

Wesley had been suffering from gout and a blood disorder in recent months, The Times, The Independent and other newspapers reported Tuesday.

The author of “The Camomile Lawn” and “A Sensible Life” was most famous for her late start in a literary career and for the enthusiastic sexuality of her characters.

“I’ve been told that I give the blue-rinse brigade quite a shock,” she once said. “People are startled by my books, because they think, ‘How can an old woman write about sex?’ As though one could forget it.”

“The idea that people go on being sexy all their lives is little explored in fiction,” Wesley told interviewer Angela Lambert in 1994.

A former baroness, and a cousin of the Duke of Wellington, Wesley drew many of her characters from the upper reaches of British society and frequently set her tales during World War II.

“The Camomile Lawn” — with plenty of sex and plenty of wartime frivolity — was made into a television series.

Author Mary Wesley, seen in this undated file photo, died Monday at her home in Totnes, Devon, England, at age 90. Wesley's first novel was published when she was 70.

“People did enjoy the war,” she told The Independent in 1994. “People of my generation had a very good time. It was an atmosphere of terror and exhilaration and parties, parties, parties. People did things they wouldn’t have done otherwise and were frivolous as well as desperate.”

The barely educated daughter of army Col. Harold Mynors Farmar– “My parents didn’t think it necessary to educate girls. …. I was totally ignorant” — Wesley was married to Baron Swinfen by the time of the war.

She worked in intelligence, had two sons, and saw her marriage break up before the war was over. She had also educated herself, and met journalist Eric Siepmann, the man she was to love from their meeting in 1944 until his death in 1970.

They were not able to marry until 1952 because his wife couldn’t be located to divorce. So the unconventional baroness changed her name legally to Siepmann and moved in with him.

When her husband died in 1970 of Parkinson’s disease, their son, Bill, was 16 and still at school.

“I had no money except for my widow’s pension and 50 pounds a month from some family trust, and no qualifications for work,” she told The Independent.

It was not until 1983, when she was 70, that she sold her first novel, “Jumping the Queue,” a bleakly humorous story of incest, suicide and middle-aged sex.