English Literature

Contact Donovan Rees

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.

  1. [ABC.]

    Petite géographie amusante abécédaire...

    C. Lehuby, ‘Librairie de l’enfance...

    A charming and very rare ABC intended...

    £3750

  2. [ACCADEMIA DELL’ARCADIA.]

    Favola di due gatti e della scimia coll’...

    Florence, Bernardo Paperini, 1730.

    First complete edition. A rare fable in...

    £550

  3. ‘A.C.’ and ‘A.L.C.’

    Dialogue entre un médecin et un homme...

    Paris, chez les marchands de nouveautés, 1824.

    Rare first edition of this entertaining...

    £375

  4. AESOP. 

    The Fables …  With a Life of the Author:...

    London, Printed for John Stockdale … 1793. 

    Second Stockdale edition, a paginary reprint...

    £6500

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

    Selectiores Aesopi Phrygis fabulae, et...

    Edinburgh, Tho. Ruddiman for George Stewart,...

    First edition thus, scarce, a Scottish...

    £375

  6. AIKEN, Conrad.

    Thee.

    New York, George Braziller, 1967.

    First trade edition, inscribed ‘For...

    £250

  7. AIKEN, Conrad.

    Selected Poems.

    New York, Oxford University Press, 1964.

    Second printing (first 1961), inscribed:...

    £150

  8. AINSWORTH, William Harrison.

    The Combat of the Thirty. From a Breton...

    London: Chapman and Hall … 1859

    First edition of the first English translations...

    £550

  9. ALBERTI, Leon Battista.

    El Momo. La moral e muy graciosa historia...

    Alcalá de Henares, Joan Mey Flandro, 1553.

    First edition in Spanish of Alberti’s...

    £3800

  10. ALBERT, Sidney P.

    ‘Shaw’s Advice to the Players of Major...

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

    £20

  11. ALEKSANDROVA, Zinaida and Dmitry GORLOV.

    Мишкины соседи [Little...

    Moscow, VLKSM Izdatelstvo Detskoi Literaturi,...

    First edition. A very nice copy...

    £350

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

    The Tragedies of Vittorio Alfieri; translated...

    London, Printed for Longman, Hurst, Rees,...

    First edition of this translation of...

    £450

  13. ALMEIDA, Theodoro de.

    Lisboa destruida poema, author o P. Theodoro...

    Lisbon, Antonio Rodrigues Galhardo, 1803.

    First edition of this poem in six cantos,...

    £175

  14. [ANON.]

    Quia Amore Langueo.

    [Colophon:] Chiswick, Caradoc Press,...

    One of 250 copies on paper (there were...

    £75

  15. [ANON.] 

    Le moine galant, ou la vie de Don F…...

    [S.l., s.n.,] 1756. 

    Scarce first edition of this satirical...

    £450

  16. [ANON].

    Elogio del corno. Dell‘ autore della...

    Venice, Stamperia Graziosi, 1796.

    Only edition, as far as we can tell unrecorded,...

    £275

  17. ANSELMI, Giorgio, the younger

    Georgii Anselmi nepotis Epigrammaton libri...

    Venice, Maffeo Pasini, September 1528. 

    The definitive edition of the epigrams...

    £875

  18. APPIA, Béatrice.

    A fine collection of manuscript and typescript...

    Paris, 1934–6.

    An extraordinary series of love letters,...

    £7500

  19. ARISTOPHANES.

    Aristophanis comicorum principis Comoediae...

    Venice, 1542 [colophon: apud D. Jacob...

    First collected Latin edition of Aristophanes,...

    £1200

  20. ARISTOPHANES.

    The Frogs, a Comedy. Translated from the...

    Oxford, J. and J. Fletcher; London,...

    First edition in English, and the only...

    £500