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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. ADDISON, Joseph, [and Giulio RUCELLAI, translator].

    Il Tamburo parafrasi in versi sciolti della commedia tradotta...

    Florence, Andrea Bonducci, 1750.

    First edition in Italian of Joseph Addison’s 1715 The Drummer; or, the Haunted House, translated from Destouches’s French prose translation of 1737 into Italian hendecasyllabic blank verse.

    £450

  2. AYRTON, Michael.

    The Midas Consequence.

    London, Secker & Warburg, [1974].

    First edition.

    £75

  3. [BECKFORD, William.]

    Vathek, conte Arabe.

    Paris, Chez Poinçot ... 1787.

    First Paris edition of Beckford’s gothic masterpiece in the original French, so considerably revised from the Lausanne edition (also 1787) as to amount to ‘almost a new version’ (Chapman & Hodgkin, p. 127). Beckford also took the opportunity to expand the notes from one to twenty-four pages.

    £3250

  4. [BECKFORD, William, and Samuel HENLEY, translator.]

    An Arabian Tale, from an unpublished Manuscript. With Notes critical...

    London, Printed for W. Clarke … 1809.

    Scarce second edition – in fact a reissue comprising the remainder sheets of the first edition of 1786 with a cancel title-page (printed by S. Gosnell) – of Henley’s English translation of Beckford’s Gothic masterpiece, first published against the author’s wishes and predating publication...

    £1500

  5. [BERINGTON, Simon, adapted by Jean-Baptiste DUPUY-DEMPORTES.] 

    Memoires de Gaudence de Luques, prisonnier de l’Inquisition...

    Amsterdam and Leipzig, Arkstée & Merkus, 1754. 

    Second edition of this much expanded and altered translation of Berington’s celebrated utopian novel, Memoirs of Sigr Gaudentio di Lucca (1737). 

    £500

  6. BLANCHARD, Edward Litt Leman.

    A Pipe of Tobacco: with Whiffs and Clouds … With Illustrations.

    London: H. Beal … [1840s?].

    First edition, by the editor and play- and pantomime-writer E.L. Blanchard, comprising three ‘whiffs’ and two ‘clouds’ on the subject of tobacco, aimed ‘at a niche in the waistcoast pocket, rather than a more presuming station on the library shelf’. Blanchard knew Dickens and was in...

    £125

  7. BOUDIER DE VILLEMERT, Pierre-Joseph. 

    L’Andrometrie, ou examen philosophique de l’homme.  Par Monsieur l’Abbé de Villemaire. 

    Paris, chez Brunet, 1753. 

    First editions of two scarce works by the philosopher, moralist and Parisian avocat Boudier de Villemert (1716–1801), best known as the author of L’Ami des Femmes. 

    £2500

  8. BROUGHAM, Henry, first Baron Brougham and Vaux.

    Albert Lunel. A Novel ... In three Volumes ... London, Charles H.

    Clarke ... [1872].

    First edition, Sadleir’s ‘really scarce’ fourth state, of a touching memorial to the author’s daughter, with the undated Charles H. Clarke cancel titles.

    £450

  9. BURROUGHS, William.

    The Naked Lunch.

    Paris, Olympia Press, [1960].

    First edition, second printing – the first had a decorative border on the title-page, was priced 1500 francs on the rear cover, and was issued with a dust-jacket (not the earliest copies). After the franc was devalued on 1 January 1960, copies were over-stamped with a new price; and shortly after there...

    £200

  10. [BURY, Lady Charlotte].

    The Exclusives. In three Volumes ...

    London: Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley ... 1830.

    First edition of a society novel written after the enormous success of Marianne Spencer Stanhope’s Almack’s (1826), a roman à clef centred on the fashionable assembly rooms in St. James’s. In The Exclusives Lady Tilney plans a new coterie as Almack’s is in decline (‘that...

    £950

  11. CARR, Lisle.

    Judith Gwynne …

    Henry S. King & Co. … London, 1873

    First edition, a scarce romance-cum-society novel.

    £200

  12. CRAWFORD, F. Marion.

    Saracinesca ... in three Volumes ...

    William Blackwood and Sons, Edinburgh and London. 1887.

    First edition. The prolific American novelist F. Marion Crawford, born in Italy and for most of his life resident in Rome, enjoyed a phenomenal success both in England and America. Saracinesca is the first novel of his Roman tetralogy (with Sant’ Ilario, Don Orsino, and Corleone: a Sicilian Story),...

    £280

  13. DE BEAUVOIR, Simone.

    The Mandarins. A Novel …

    Cleveland and New York, The World Publishing Company, [1956].

    First edition in English, signed by De Beauvoir on the limitation leaf, one of 500 unnumbered copies, of which only 275 were for sale.

    £750

  14. DESENFANS, Noel Joseph.

    Les deux Hermites, dédié a mylord Lyttelton …

    A Londres; chez R. Davis … J Ridley … W Owen … 1773.

    First and only edition, uncommon, of an epistolary novel by the future art dealer Noel Joseph Desenfans. The scene is Paris in the 1680s, the theme is Enlightenment, and the author’s aim was to inspire ‘l’horreur de l’oppression, sentiment nécessaire à l’harmonie de la Société, & vertu...

    £650

  15. DESFORGES, Pierre Choudard.

    Tom Jones a Londres, Comédie en cinq actes et en vers, tirée du roman de Fielding … Réprésentée,...

    Paris, Chez Prault, Imprimeur du Roi … 1789.

    Later edition, first published 1782. Desforges’s dramatic adaptation of Fielding’s novel was followed in 1788 by an apparently inferior sequel, Tom Jones et Fellamar.

    £95

  16. DICKENS, Charles.

    Mäster Humphreys Klocka … Förra [–Sednare] Delen.

    Stockholm, Hos. L. J. Hjerta, 1842.

    First edition in Swedish, very rare, of Master Humphrey’s Clock (1840-1), comprising the framing narrative of short stories, followed by The Old Curiosity Shop (‘Den Gamla Antiqvitets-boden’). Barnaby Rudge, omitted here, was published separately in 1845.

    £850

  17. DICKENS, Charles. 

    The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club … with forty-three illustrations, by R. Seymour and Phiz. 

    London, Chapman & Hall, 1837. 

    First edition, first issue.  The Pickwick Papers was serialised in twenty parts from April 1836, the novel reaching its conclusion in November 1837, when it was also released as a three-decker.  It was both Dickens’s most popular work and the launch of his relationship with Hablot K. Browne...

    £2000

  18. DICKENS, Charles.

    Mäster Humphreys Klocka … Förra [–Sednare] Delen.

    Stockholm, Hos. L. J. Hjerta, 1842.

    First edition in Swedish, rare, of Master Humphrey’s Clock (1840-1), comprising the framing narrative of short stories, followed by The Old Curiosity Shop (‘Den Gamla Antiqvitets-boden’). Barnaby Rudge, omitted here, was published separately in 1845.

    £350

  19. DICKENS, Charles.

    The Personal History of David Copperfield … With Illustrations by H. K. Browne.

    London, Bradbury & Evans, 1850.

    First edition, an early issue, with both title-pages dated 1850, the corrected reading ‘screwed’ on p. 132, but otherwise first issue points as listed by Eckel and Smith.

    £750

  20. DICKENS, Charles; Hablot Knight BROWNE and George CATTERMOLE, illustrators.

    Master Humphrey’s Clock.

    London, Chapman and Hall, 1840–41.

    First edition in book form, of Charles Dickens’ weekly periodical, featuring a collection of short stories and his two novels The Old Curiosity Shop and Barnaby Rudge.

    £175