From Calgary to Karachi and Canberra, book lovers have joined Hampshire villagers to protest a 14-mile housing strip across the landscapes that inspired Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility.

Fans of Jane Austen from around the world are uniting with East Hampshire residents to fight plans for 20,000 homes that campaigners say would destroy “one of England’s most beautiful and iconic landscapes.”

The group Save Jane Austen Country has brought together book lovers on six continents and more than a dozen parish and village groups between Farnham and Alresford in opposition to East Hampshire District Council’s proposal to build 20,556 homes by 2043.

An online petition describing the area as “a haven of inspiration and peace” has gathered 18,356 signatures in a week, warning that the plan would “crush Roman, Saxon and Domesday Book settlements” and “turn ancient villages and peaceful countryside into a giant building site until at least 2043.”

The campaign argues that the 14-mile development corridor would devastate two chalk streams — the upper Wey and the River Itchen — and destroy much of the scenery that inspired Austen’s writing in Chawton.

A Jane Austen Society of India spokeswoman said: “It’s a terrible development. Just really sad.”

A31 Alliance chair Sir Charles Cockburn, 75, of Beech, said: “No sense, nor sensibility! Unforgivably, East Hampshire District Council has sneaked out a Land Availability Assessment which gives the game away. Virtually every one of the 274 sites now identified will have to be allocated for development to meet the government’s doubled requirement. This means houses everywhere.”

Tessa Laughton, 53, of Save Neatham Down, added: “Future generations will never forgive this desecration of the home of Pride and Prejudice. This is priceless English heritage, being lost forever.”

Jane Austen’s links with the area include her home in Chawton — now a museum — where she wrote or revised her six famous novels. There is also a statue of her in Alton town centre, set in Regency Gardens near the site of the bank where her brother Henry once worked.

With the 250th anniversary of her birth approaching next year, campaigners say the countryside that inspired her should be protected, not paved over.

An East Hampshire District Council spokesman said the plans were “for development in the A31 corridor” but did not yet “exist as planning applications or site allocations.” He added that no decisions had been made and the Local Plan would not be adopted until summer 2027.