Jane Austen books sell for £181,000 at auction in Gloucestershire

The novels by Jane Austen, which sold at auction for £181,600 were originally bought for about £5,000

Five first-edition Jane Austen novels have sold for a total of more than £181,000 at auction.

The books went under the hammer at Dominic Winter Auctions in Cirencester, with Pride and Prejudice the most popular, selling for £92,000.

They were put up for auction by the daughter of a UK-based private collector who bought them for about £5,000 in the 1970s and 1980s.

Auctioneer Chris Albury said he was "absolutely delighted" with the result.

The rarest of the books on sale was a first edition of Sense and Sensibility, which sold for £62,000

The copy of Pride and Prejudice is one of about 1,500 copies which were published in 1813.

The rarest of the five books on offer was Sense and Sensibility, as fewer than 1,000 were printed when it was first published anonymously in 1811.

It attracted the second-highest successful bid of £62,000, with Emma, published in 1816, reaching £12,800.

Mansfield Park sold for £8,400 and Northanger Abbey and Persuasion for £6,400.

Who was Jane Austen?

• Born on 16 December 1775 in the Hampshire village of Steventon, where her father was the local clergyman

• Began writing as a teenager and published Pride and Prejudice, Emma, Mansfield Park and Sense and Sensibility based on her observations of middle and upper-class Regency England

• Lived in Bath from 1801 before moving to Southampton and then the Hampshire village of Chawton after her father died

• Her books were published anonymously during her lifetime

• Died in Winchester in 1817 at the age of 41 and was buried in the cathedral

• Persuasion and Northanger Abbey were published posthumously and a final novel was left incomplete

Mr Albury said the novels went to four different buyers who attended in person or on the phone, with no internet bidders successful.

"It may be some time before we see as good copies of Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice again so these will live in the memory for a long time.

"The consensus among those who watched and participated was that these were all strong prices," he added.

Auctioneer Chris Albury said first copies of Pride and Prejudice were the most sought-after by collectors

Mr Albury said that the seller had decided to put the books up for auction to "let others get the pleasure from them and use the money for new projects and plans".

"She was a great fan of Jane Austen but these were the only rare books she ever bought and they would be brought out every now and then, treated carefully by the family, and then put back in the bookcase," he added.