LONDON, United Kingdom (Reuters) — A letter critiquing contemporary author Rachel Hunter for being “prosy” in her Gothic novel titled “Lady Maclairn, the Victim of Villany” will go under the hammer at a London auction house on Tuesday (July 11).
The letter is from Austen to Anna Lefroy, the eldest daughter of the author’s eldest brother Rev. James Austen. Auctioneers Sotheby’s expect it to fetch 80,000 pounds ($103,000) to 100,000 pounds.
The auctioneers said that the letters, dating from 29-30 October 1812 when the “Pride and Prejudice” author was at her literary peak, had belonged to the Austen family, and had never been offered for sale before.
A measure of the author’s enduring popularity, Austen memorabilia can command spectacular sums. In 2011, the earliest surviving Austen manuscript, a handwritten draft for a book that was never published, sold for 993,250 pounds ($1.6 million) at auction.