A VIRGINIA Woolf first edition is expected to fetch up to £5,000 at auction in Swindon later this month.

The 1925 copy of Mrs Dalloway is to be sold by Dominic Winter Book Auctions in Maxwell Street on Thursday, May 15.

It is one of 204 lots from the library of the late Robert Henriques an author, soldier and prominent member of one of Britain's most noted Jewish families, who lived in the Cotswolds.

Born in 1905, Mr Henriques died in 1967 and his library is being sold following the death of his widow earlier this year his children lack the space to house them.

He specialised in collecting the works of 20th Century modernist authors such as Woolf, DH Lawrence and James Joyce, although he also bought other works.

Dominic Winter said: "Mr Henriques' wife lived until the beginning of the year, and the room where he kept his books had been kept almost as a time capsule.

"There are quite a few of the modern first editions that had been wrapped up by him in brown paper, and their condition is, in some cases, excellent ."

Mr Winter added that the family came to the auction house after taking advice from people in the book trade a sign of the Swindon auction house's burgeoning reputation as a strong rival to the London auction houses.

Other catalogue highlights include:

A 1930 first edition of Graham Greene's second novel, The Name of Action estimated sale price up to £1,000.

A 1915 first edition of DH Lawrence's The Rainbow estimated sale price up to £1,500.

A 1928 two-volume first edition of DH Lawrence's Collected poems estimated sale price up to £1,000.

A 1926 first edition of an essay by Evelyn Waugh on the Victorian Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood of artists estimated sale price up to £1,000.