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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. POPE, Alexander.

    Letters of Mr Alexander Pope, and several of his Friends.

    London: Printed by J. Wright for J. Knapton … L. Gilliver … J. Brindley … and R. Dodsley … 1737.

    First folio edition, large paper issue, preceded by a subscribers’ edition in quarto, of the first ‘official’ version of Pope’s letters.

    £1500

  2. [POPE, Walter.] 

    The Memoires of Monsieur Du Vall: containing the history of his Life and Death.  Whereunto are annexed his last...

    London, Printed for Henry Brome … 1670. 

    First(?) edition of a partly fictitious and often satirical life of the highwayman Claude Duval, published shortly after his execution in 1670.  This is the more substantial of two opportunistic biographies, between them the main sources of information about him, though by no means entirely trustworthy. ...

    £750

  3. PORTER, Anna Maria.

    The Village of Mariendorpt. A Tale … in four Volumes …

    London: Printed for Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme and Brown … 1821

    First edition of a rather melodramatic novel set in Bavaria towards the end of the Thirty Years War. It proved just what Longman was looking for, and a sequel, Roche-Blanche, followed in 1822.

    £1200

  4. PORTER, Jane.

    Duke Christian of Luneburg; or, Tradition from the Hartz … in three Volumes …

    London: Printed for Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green … 1824.

    First edition. One of the earliest exponents of the historical novel, Porter enjoyed enormous popularity during her lifetime. Duke Christian of Luneburg was her sixth book, which she modestly described as ‘a little traditionary [sic] sketch of an illustrious hero’. Set in sixteenth-century...

    £650

  5. PORTER, Jane and Anna Maria.

    Coming out; and the Field of Forty Footsteps … In three Volumes …

    London: Printed for Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green … 1828.

    First edition; the first two volumes comprise ‘Coming Out; a Tale of the nineteenth century’ by Anna Maria Porter, the final volume is her sister’s ‘Field of Forty Footsteps; a Tale of the seventeenth century’. ‘Either would have made a three-decker all by itself’ (Wolff).

    £650

  6. [POUND.] 

    Ezra Pound at Seventy.

    [New York, New Directions, 1955.] 

    A small celebratory booklet printing tributes by Auden, Cummings, Eliot, Hemingway (‘Will gladly pay tribute to Ezra but what I would like to do is get him the hell out of St. Elizabeth’s’), Archibald Macleish, Jose de Pina Martins, Marianne Moore, Norman Pearson, Spender, and Edith Sitwell.

    £30

  7. POUND, Ezra.

    The Letters … 1907-1941. Edited by D. D. Paige

    … London, Faber & Faber, [1951].

    First English edition, an association copy.

    £150

  8. POUND, Ezra.

    The Classic Anthology defined by Confucius.

    London, Faber & Faber, 1955.

    First English edition, first printing, comprising sheets of the Harvard University Press edition (1954) with a cancel Faber title-page.

    £175

  9. POUND, Ezra.

    Selected Poems.

    The New Classics Series. [New York, New Directions, 1949.]

    First edition, inscribed in a characteristic mix of the formal and the faux-Cockney ‘Geoffrey Bridson certified + worthy owner hereof. / To which mi ’and [i.e. my hand]/ Ezra Pound / 9 A[ugust?] ’56’. The book was given to the BBC Broadcater D.G. Bridson on the occasion of his visit...

    £2750

  10. POUND, Ezra.

    Quia Pauper amavi.

    London, The Egoist Ltd, [1919].

    First edition, one of 500 ordinary copies (there were also 100 signed copies on handmade paper’, inscribed ‘Bridson’s copy / 11 Ap ’59 / Ezra Pound’. This work contained the first English publication of Cantos I–III, not printed in that order.

    £1750

  11. POUND, Ezra.

    Collected early Poems …

    London, Faber & Faber, [1977].

    First English edition.

    £50

  12. POUND, Ezra.

    The Literary Essays … Edited with an Introduction by T. S.

    Eliot. London, Faber & Faber, [1954].

    First edition, first impression.

    £75

  13. [POUND, Ezra.]

    Agenda. Twenty-first Anniversary Ezra Pound Special Issue.

    London, Agenda Editions, 1980.

    Reprinting a number of works by Pound alongside criticism. Bridson’s article ‘Italian Painting in the Cantos’, one of his last publications, appears on pp. 210-217.

    £75

  14. POUND, Ezra.

    Cantos 110–116 …

    printed & published by the Fuck You / press at a secret location in the lower east side, New York City, USA, 1967.

    Unauthorised edition (unsurprisingly), no. 261 of 300 copies. The contents are extracts and include a number of apparently unidentified lines; this piracy forced the publication of Drafts and Fragment of Cantos CX–CXVII (1969).

    £150

  15. POUND, Ezra.

    Gaudier-Brzeska, a Memoir …

    [London,] The Marvell Press, [1960].

    Revised edition, inscribed by Dorothy Pound on behalf of her husband to ‘J[oyce] + G[eoffrey] Bridson. DP for EP / Sept 1961. Brunnenburg’.

    £250

  16. POUND, Ezra, and Ernest FENELLOSA.

    Introduzione ai Nô, con un drama in un atto di Motokiyo: Kagekiyo.

    Milan, All’insegna del pesce d’oro [Scheiwiller], [1958].

    Third edition, translations of Pound’s ‘Introduction’ and one play from Certain Noble Plays of Japan by his daughter Mary de Rachewiltz. This third edition added ‘Un intervallo di 40 anni’ by Pound, dated November 1958.

    £30

  17. POUND, Ezra, and D.G. BRIDSON.

    ‘An Interview with Ezra Pound’ in New Directions 17. Norfolk, Conn.,

    New Directions, [1961].

    First edition, printing the majority of the interviews recorded in 1956 and broadcast in 1959. Other contributors to this issue included Kerouac, Ginsberg, and Williams.

    £100

  18. POUND, Ezra, and Giovanni GIUDICI, translator.

    H.S. Mauberley, tradotto di Giovanni Giudici con tre disegni inedita...

    Milan, all’insegna del pesce d’oro [Scheiwiller], 1959.

    First edition, no. 141 of 1000 copies, a parallel-text Italian translation of Pound’s modernist masterpiece Hugh Selwyn Mauberley (1920).

    £100

  19. POWYS, John Cowper.

    A Glastonbury Romance.

    London, John Lane The Bodley Head Limited, [1933].

    First edition of Powys’s monumental sixth novel. Though we cannot trace a direct link between Powys and Bridson, Bridson certainly knew Powys’s friend James Hanley - they worked together for the BBC during the war. The centrality of the Grail legends to A Glastonbury Romance would...

    £175

  20. PRESENT FOR THE YOUNG (A).

    London: Printed for The Religious Tract Society … and sold at their Depository … also by J. Nisbet...

    [c. 1827]

    First edition. A finely illustrated anthology of religious verse, contemplations, and prayers for children. Pieces include poems on the seasons and stories about a Welsh Shepherd, and ‘The Hill and the Valley’, all with heavily metaphorical content.

    £175