FRESH clues to the origins of Peter Rabbit, Beatrix Potter's most famous character, have been unearthed in a previously unseen archive of watercolours and drawings by the children's author who made her home in the Lake District.

Potter enthusiasts on both sides of the Atlantic are expected to snap up the 32 original works of art - discovered by chance - when they go under the hammer in November.

The images were discovered in a house in Kent, concealed between the pages of books, and inside a small, leather-bound folder.

One depicts a blue-jacketed rabbit in a garden, reminiscent of Peter Rabbit, the character whose adventures in Mr McGregor's garden were privately printed by Potter in 1901, as The Tale of Peter Rabbit.

The works are expected to fetch between £700 and £5,000 - a total of £50,000 - when they are sold at Dominic Winter Book Auctions, Swindon, Wiltshire, on November 10.

"It's a well-known fact that Beatrix Potter gave away her little drawings and scribbes and doodles quite freely," Dominic Winter told the Gazette.

"We are making the case that a number of these illustrations could well be the prototype for Peter Rabbit and other animal characters.

To scholars and enthusiasts it's a whole new chapter that previously there was no information about."

As Mr Winter explained, the remarkable haul was discovered in a house in Kent, which was bequeathed with all its contents to an elderly man in 1992.

It was some time before he started to look through the contents of the house.

One day he was flicking through a book when a simple pencil drawing on grey paper fluttered out.

It was signed 'Helen Beatrix Potter, March 1876' - when she was nine years old.

Over the next few weeks, he discovered 35 drawings and watercolours, many of dressed animal characters.

Judy Taylor, of the Beatrix Potter Society, said: "It is always exciting when new Potter material is discovered, but tantalising when its full history remains hidden."

Miss Taylor said the watercolours of fruit and flowers were "particularly striking", and Potter was "a keen observer of nature" from a very early age.

Of the collection, one image has been donated to the Beatrix Potter Society, one to the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, and one retained by the private collector who is selling the images.

Auctioneer Mr Winter expects "strong interest" from the States and the home market, as buyers have the chance to secure a genuine Potter picture for less than £1,000.

Beatrix Potter bought Hill Top Farm at Sawrey with the proceeds from her children's books in 1905, and became a prize-winning Herdwick sheep farmer.

She died in 1943, bequeathing more than 4,000 acres of land, cottages and farms to the National Trust.