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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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  1. 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

  2. [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

  3. POUND, Ezra.

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

    … London, Faber & Faber, [1951].

    First English edition, an association copy.

    £150

  4. 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

  5. POUND, Ezra.

    Section: Rock-Drill. 85-95 de los Cantares.

    Milan, All’insegna del pesce d’oro [Scheiwiller], 1955.

    First edition, No. 347 of 500 copies, inscribed on the front free endpaper ‘To Geoffrey, “in alta stima” from D. / 6. 7. 56.’, with Bridson’s note identifying this as the actor and producer Denis Goacher.

    £450

  6. POUND, Ezra.

    Thrones. 96-109 de los cantares.

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

    First edition, no. 10 of 300 copies, one of the early copies with a misprint in l.9 on p. 85, cancelled in manuscript by the publisher.

    £650

  7. 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

  8. 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

  9. POUND, Ezra.

    How to Read …

    London, Desmond Harmsworth, [1931].

    First edition, a fine association copy. Agnes Bedford (1892-1969) was a lifelong friend of Pound (they first met in 1919 and corresponded until 1963 when he unexpectedly severed contact) and through him of Wyndham Lewis, with whom she had an affair in the 1920s. A vocal coach and accompanist,...

    £750

  10. POUND, Ezra.

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

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

    First edition, first impression.

    £75

  11. POUND, Ezra.

    Collected early Poems …

    London, Faber & Faber, [1977].

    First English edition.

    £50

  12. [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

  13. 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

  14. 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

  15. 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

  16. 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

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

    ‘Four Steps’ by Ezra Pound. Produced by D. G. Bridson.

    [7 May 1958].

    Typescript of the broadcast of ‘Four Steps’, as recorded by Bridson in Washington in 1956, aired on the evening of Pound’s release from St Elizabeth’s Hospital in 1958, along with Bridson’s introductory statement, explaining the genesis of the recording.

    £450

  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. POUND, Ezra, and Noel STOCK, translators.

    Love Poems of ancient Egypt.

    [New York, New Directions, 1962].

    First edition.

    £75

  20. 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