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.
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MARKISH, Peretz Davidovich.
Brat’ia [Brothers].
Moscow, Goslitizdat, 1935.
First edition in Russian of Markish’s epic poem Brider (Brothers, Kiev, 1929), an optimistic work glorifying the Communist regime.
£1200
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[MARLBOROUGH, John Churchill, Duke of.]
Tract volume of five rare works (three not in the British Library) relating to the...
London, 1695–1706.
The Hero of the Age, published December 1704 by the otherwise unknown Jasper Robins, is one of the rarest literary contributions to the national outpouring that accompanied the martial success of John Churchill, first Duke of Marlborough, in the early years of the eighteenth century. It comprises...
£3850
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MARSHAK, Samuil Iakovlevich, and Mikhail TSEKHANOVSKII.
Почта [Post].
Leningrad, ‘Pechatnyi Dvor’, 1931.
Sixth edition (first published by Raduga in 1927) of an attractive Marshak children’s story, with illustrations by the artist and animator Tsekhanovsky.
£750
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MARSHALL, W.
Monsell Digby. A Novel, in three Volumes ...
London: Remington and Co. ... 1880.
First edition. Set in industrial and rural Lancashire against the background of the economic unrest of 1815, Monsell Digby follows the fortunes of a number of young men caught up in a murderous Luddite riot and its aftermath. Not in NUC and Supplement; UCLA and Texas only on OCLC. Wolff 4582.
£400
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MARTINEAU, Harriet.
British Rule in India; a historical Sketch …
London: Smith, Elder and Co … 1857.
First edition. Martineau wrote regularly for the Daily News from 1851-66, and produced nearly 1600 leaders in which she addessed international issues such as the American Civil War, and Britain’s position in the West Indies, Ireland and India. Her articles on India contributed to this work,...
£150
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MARTIN, Theodore, Sir.
Horace and his Friends. Two Lectures delivered at the Edinburgh Philosophical Institution …
Printed for private Circulation. 1881.
First editions of two privately-printed pamphlets by the poet, translator and biographer Theodore Martin (1816–1909) – presentation copies, to the Scottish journalist John Skelton, a frequent contributor to Blackwood’s Magazine (as was Martin).
£400
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MATTHIEU, Pierre, et al.
Tablettes ou quatrains de la vie et de la mort. Par Pierre Matthieu, conseiller du roy.
Première [– troisième] partie … Rouen, Jacques Cailloué, 1628.
Very rare pocket-sized Rouen edition of verses on life and death by the poet and royal historiographer Pierre Matthieu (1563–1621), here printed with further poems by Guy du Faur de Pibrac, Antoine Favre and others. All early editions are extremely rare, many known in a single copy.
£3000
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MEAD, Richard.
A Short Discourse concerning pestilential Contagion, and the Methods to be used to prevent it … The third Edition.
London: Printed [by William Bowyer] for Sam. Buckley … and Ralph Smith … 1720.
‘Third edition’ of the most famous medical tract on the plague scare of 1720-1, written at the request of James Craggs, the secretary of State following the bubonic outbreak in Marseilles in late 1719. There were seven London editions within the year, those from the third on being re-impressions...
£375
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[MEDICAL DICTIONARY.]
Dictionary of medical terms, Latin-English wordlist, and list of abbreviations and contractions.
[S.l., early 1800s].
An interesting manuscript compiled by an anonymous medical student, comprising a dictionary of medical terms, from ‘Abdomen’ to ‘Zoster’, followed by a glossary of Latin terms with their English equivalents (including ‘Machina electrica – the electric machine’), and ending with a...
£450
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MEDINA POMAR, Duke de.
Fashion and Passion or, Life in Mayfair … by the Duke de Pomar… Author of “The Honeymoon” and “Through...
London: Chapman & Hall … 1877.
Second edition (first published in 1876) of this wildly-popular novel of London society, published after the first edition sold out in two months. It follows the fortunes of the beautiful Señorita Consuelo and her lover Alfredo, who meet on a small-trader passage from Bilbao to London. Consuelo’s...
£125
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[MEIN, Robert.]
A Nominal Encomium on the Election of Magistrates at Michaelmass 1764.
[Edinburgh, 1764.]
First edition, very rare, a poem celebrating both the election of James Stuart of Binend as Lord Provost of Edinburgh, and the plans for the construction of Edinburgh New Town, of which building was to commence in 1767. Typically for Mein he anagrammatizes his subject as ‘A Just Master’,...
£450
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MELECRINIS, Maria Teresa.
Le voci del cuore a Maria Teresa Melecrinis dei baroni di Ioppolo e Coccorino che a di 6 luglio 1846...
Naples, stamperia dell' Iride, 1846.
Very rare collection of odes and sonnets composed to mark the entry of Maria Teresa Melecrinis into the Benedictine monastery of San Paolo at Sorrento.
£175
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MEREDITH, George.
One of our Conquerors ... In three Volumes ...
London: Chapman and Hall ... 1891.
First edition of a ‘striking study of marital misery’ (Sutherland). Sadleir 1700.
£400
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MEREDITH, George.
One of our Conquerors ... In three Volumes ...
London: Chapman and Hall ... 1891.
First edition of a ‘striking study of marital misery’ (Sutherland). Sadleir 1700.
£300
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MEREDITH, George.
Poems …
London: John W. Parker and Son … [1851].
First edition of Meredith’s first book, which he brought out at his ‘own risk, losing £50 or £60 on the venture’. ‘Not surprisingly he acquired a strong distate for what he later regarded as juvenilia with direct relationship to his first marriage’ (Collie), and there is some suggestion that...
£700
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MEREDITH, George.
Modern Love, and Poems of the English Roadside, with Poems and Ballads.
London: Chapman & Hall, 1862.
First edition of a major Victorian collection of poems. The title poem, a daring and innovative work for its day, adapts the sonnet sequence tradition (though in poems of sixteen lines) to the emotional realities of a failed contemporary marriage, tracing the course of estrangement as love gives way...
£450
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[MEREDITH, Royston].
Mr. Steele detected: or, the poor and oppressed Orphan’s Letters to the great and arbitrary Mr. Steele;...
London: Printed for John Morphew … 1714.
First and only edition: a fulminating attack on The Ladies Library. Written by a Lady. Published by Mr. Steele (1714), now known to be a curious adaptation by Bishop Berkeley of Jeremy Taylor’s devotional classics, The Rule and Exercise of Holy Living and Holy Dying, in ‘large...
£950
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MEURSIUS, Johannes.
Ioannis Meursi Regnum Atticum, sive de regibus Atheniensium, eorumque rebus gestis, libri III.
Amsterdam, Jan Jansson, 1633.
First edition, a study of ancient Attic mythology and history by the Dutch classicist Meursius (Jan van Meurs, 1579–1639).
£300
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MEYERS, Jeffrey, editor.
Wyndham Lewis, A Revaluation. New essays.
London, The Athlone Press, [1980].
First edition, printing on pp. 238-251 Bridson’s essay ‘The Human Age in Retrospect’, his last published work.
£50
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MILBANK, Augustus Sussex.
A Treatise upon the political & social Condition of Europe, from the Fall of the Roman Empire, down to...
[Richmond, M. Bell for] London, Messrs Hatchard & Son, and Richmond, M. Bell, 1847.
First and only edition of a rare Yorkshire-printed treatise of social history by an amateur historian and educational enthusiast, inscribed by the author to the Countess of Sandwich.
£125