A rare first edition of Hampshire author Jane Austen’s classic Pride and Prejudice is expected to fetch up to £100,000 when it’s auctioned.

The literary romantic masterpiece, whose heroine Elizabth Bennett famously falls for the haughty charms of the dashing Mr Darcy, goes under the hammer later this month.

Jane Austen found inspiration in her Hampshire country home in 1797 to write Pride and Prejudice.

Copies of the period drama which is full of suspense, romance, upbringing and morality in Georgian England, cost 18 shillings – a mere 90p in today’s money – to buy when it was published in three volumes in 1813.

Since then the book has sold more than 20 million copies worldwide, been adapted for the BBC and Hollywood hits and caused many a female heart to beat faster when Hampshire hunk Colin Firth emerged as Mr Darcy dripping wet out of a lake.

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Now, 200 years later, a first edition of the novel, originally published in three volumes, and still in its original covers is up for auction.

Auctioneers Sotheby’s, who will sell the book in London on October 28, said this copy is “extremely rare in the original boards”.

Pride and Prejudice is just one of five Jane Austen first editions being sold at the same auction and it is thought all five could sell for up to £220,000- the cost of a Hampshire house.

Other books in the sale are Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility, Emma, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion.

They are among 149 rare books, many of which first editions or signed by their authors, that have been put up for sale by a wealthy 75-year-old whose identity is not being revealed. The books, which took him 45 years to collect, are set to fetch around £3m in total at the auction.

Jane Austen, who was born at Steventon in Hampshire wrote her famous works by drawing on a large circle of friends, social gatherings and places around the county that she visited to devise the characters and settings for her novels.

The inspirational writer stayed in Steventon for 25 years.

Between 1807 and 1809 she lived in Castle Square, in Southampton.

From 1809 Jane Austen lived at Chawton near Alton.

This is widely regarded as her literary home. She wrote her most famous classics there before falling ill and dying at lodgings in Winchester. She is buried in Winchester Cathedral.