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English Literature

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British literature and history from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century, with an emphasis on poetry, fiction, and drama.

We usually have a selection of literary works from the STC and Wing period (i.e. before 1701), and a broad range of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century fiction and poetry, particularly the Romantics. We also have a selection of historical manuscripts, prints and broadsides, and works in translation.

Among important works which have passed through our hands are the editor's presentation copy of Milton's Lycidas, Swift's Modest Proposal, the autograph draft of Byron's She walks in beauty, the autograph manuscript of Jane Austen's only play Sir Charles Grandison, Dickens’s copy of Vanity Fair, Trollope's classical library, and, over the years, some fifty Shakespeare First Folios.

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  1. [ABC.]

    Petite géographie amusante abécédaire nouveau offrant pour chaque lettre de l’alphabet une carte coloriée avec l’explication...

    C. Lehuby, ‘Librairie de l’enfance et de la jeunesse’, [1851].

    A charming and very rare ABC intended to teach children European geography, from A for Allemagne to Z for Zara in Dalmatia, published just a few years after the upheavals of the revolutions of 1848.

    £3750

  2. [ACCADEMIA DELL’ARCADIA.]

    Favola di due gatti e della scimia coll’ appello de’ medesimi gatti all’ orso, divisa in due...

    Florence, Bernardo Paperini, 1730.

    First complete edition. A rare fable in parallel Latin and Italian verse by members of the Accademia dell’Arcadia, comprising Due gatti ed una scimia (first published in 1728) and the first appearance of the second part, Appello de’ due gatti all’ orso. Both are published only pseudonymously under...

    £550

  3. ‘A.C.’ and ‘A.L.C.’

    Dialogue entre un médecin et un homme du monde …

    Paris, chez les marchands de nouveautés, 1824.

    Rare first edition of this entertaining satirical dialogue between ‘M. de B.’ and ‘le docteur X’, taking a swipe at contemporary medicine and the medical profession.

    £375

  4. AESOP. 

    The Fables …  With a Life of the Author: and embellished with one hundred & twelve Plates … 

    London, Printed for John Stockdale … 1793. 

    Second Stockdale edition, a paginary reprint of the first with the text reset using a short ‘s’ throughout; the translation was that of Samuel Croxall.  Stockdale’s Aesop was notable for the extensive suite of illustrations, with plates by some thirty engravers including Stothard and Landseer,...

    £6500

  5. AESOP, et al. [George STEWART, editor].

    Selectiores Aesopi Phrygis fabulae, et Luciani Samosatensis dialogi. Isocratis...

    Edinburgh, Tho. Ruddiman for George Stewart, 1723.

    First edition thus, scarce, a Scottish school textbook comprising selections in Greek and Latin from Aesop’s Fables, Lucian’s Dialogues, the orations of Isocrates, and the Tablet of Cebes.

    £375

  6. AIKEN, Conrad.

    Thee.

    New York, George Braziller, 1967.

    First trade edition, inscribed ‘For Geoffrey and Joyce [Bridson] / this little hymn of love / from Conrad / 1968’.

    £250

  7. AIKEN, Conrad.

    Selected Poems.

    New York, Oxford University Press, 1964.

    Second printing (first 1961), inscribed: ‘For Geoffrey from Conrad and Savannah with a Hosanna 1968’. Born in Savannah, Georgia, Aiken spent winters there later in his life. It was in Savannah in April 1968 that Bridson recorded the unbroadcast interviews which provide a valuable insight into...

    £150

  8. AINSWORTH, William Harrison.

    The Combat of the Thirty. From a Breton Lay of the fourteenth Century. With an Introduction, comprising...

    London: Chapman and Hall … 1859

    First edition of the first English translations of these two texts, inscribed to ‘James Crossley from his old friend William Harrison Ainsworth’. The two men had been friends since 1817 when Crossley, a solicitor, was articled to Ainsworth’s father and later became a partner in the firm. He was...

    £550

  9. ALBERTI, Leon Battista.

    El Momo. La moral e muy graciosa historia del Momo; compuesta en Latin por el docto varon Leon Bapista...

    Alcalá de Henares, Joan Mey Flandro, 1553.

    First edition in Spanish of Alberti’s Momus [or De principe], translated by Augustín de Almaçan and with an introductory 8-page Exposición by the Toledo ascetic writer and scholar Alejo Venegas (1495?–1554?).

    £3800

  10. ALBERT, Sidney P.

    ‘Shaw’s Advice to the Players of Major Barbara’, Reprinted from Theatre Survey, X, 1 (1969); and ‘Reflections...

    Reprinted from Modern Drama, XIV, 2 (1791).

    £20

  11. ALEKSANDROVA, Zinaida and Dmitry GORLOV.

    Мишкины соседи [Little Bear’s neighbours].

    Moscow, VLKSM Izdatelstvo Detskoi Literaturi, 1936.

    First edition. A very nice copy of this collection of verses for young children, composed by one of the most prolific Soviet children’s poets, and illustrated by one of the most prolific of Soviet children’s artists. The tales tell of the lives of a selection of farm and wild animals, including...

    £350

  12. ALFIERI, Vittorio, and Charles LLOYD, translator.

    The Tragedies of Vittorio Alfieri; translated from the Italian...

    London, Printed for Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown … 1815.

    First edition of this translation of Alfieri’s (1749–1803) tragedies into English, undertaken by the poet Charles Lloyd ‘on the suggestion of a friend whose judgement I highly respect’, likely Robert Southey, whom he addresses as his ‘sponsor’ in the ‘Dedicatory Sonnet’.

    £450

  13. ALMEIDA, Theodoro de.

    Lisboa destruida poema, author o P. Theodoro de Almeida, da Congregaçaõ do Oratorio de Lisboa.

    Lisbon, Antonio Rodrigues Galhardo, 1803.

    First edition of this poem in six cantos, with extensive notes, on the disastrous 1755 Lisbon earthquake, by the Oratorian priest and philosopher Almeida (1722-1804). One of the deadliest in history, the earthquake almost totally destroyed the Portuguese capital and accentuated political tensions within...

    £175

  14. [ANON.]

    Quia Amore Langueo.

    [Colophon:] Chiswick, Caradoc Press, 1902.

    One of 250 copies on paper (there were also 20 on vellum), printed from a fifteenth-century manuscript at Lambeth Palace Library.

    £75

  15. [ANON.] 

    Le moine galant, ou la vie de Don F… Bernardin, ecrite par lui-même. 

    [S.l., s.n.,] 1756. 

    Scarce first edition of this satirical ‘autobiography’ of a pleasure-driven law student turned monk, replete with amorous adventures. 

    £450

  16. [ANON].

    Elogio del corno. Dell‘ autore della felice produzione italiana intitolata Della Necessità ed Utilità dei Debiti.

    Venice, Stamperia Graziosi, 1796.

    Only edition, as far as we can tell unrecorded, of this anonymously published poem in praise of the horn. Although ostensibly a chaste work extolling the virtues of the instrument, there is enough to suggest that the poet may have been thinking along less musical lines; the horn, we are repeatedly told,...

    £275

  17. ANSELMI, Giorgio, the younger. 

    Georgii Anselmi nepotis Epigrammaton libri septem. Sosthyrides. Peplum Palladis. Aeglogae...

    Venice, Maffeo Pasini, September 1528. 

    The definitive edition of the epigrams of Giorgio Anselmi, grandson of the astrologer and music theorist of the same name, with several epigrams on his grandfather’s lost works on magic and the occult. 

    £875

  18. APPIA, Béatrice.

    A fine collection of manuscript and typescript correspondence and humorous drawings, sent to her lover Jean Carteret,...

    Paris, 1934–6.

    An extraordinary series of love letters, by turns passionate, mocking and lyrical, with copious illustration, sent by the Swiss-born French artist Béatrice Appia (1899–1998), best known for her illustrated children’s books, to the philosopher and astrologer Jean Carteret (1906–1980), here addressed...

    £7500

  19. ARISTOPHANES.

    Aristophanis comicorum principis Comoediae undecim, e graeco in latinum ad verbu[m] translatae Andreae Divo Iustinopolitano...

    Venice, 1542 [colophon: apud D. Jacob a Burgofrancho papiensem, 1538].

    First collected Latin edition of Aristophanes, translated from the Greek by Andrea Divo.

    £1200

  20. ARISTOPHANES.

    The Frogs, a Comedy. Translated from the Greek of Aristophanes, by C[harles] Dunster, A.M …

    Oxford, J. and J. Fletcher; London, Rivington, Payne, Faulder, Cadell; Cambridge, Merrill, [1785].

    First edition in English, and the only separately published translation of The Frogs in the eighteenth century. ‘It is … somewhat surprising that in an age so studious of ancient literature as the present, and which so much abounds in translations of the Greek and Latin classics, we...

    £500