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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[GOLDSMITH, Oliver.]
The Vicar of Wakefield: a Tale. Supposed to be written by himself … The second Edition. Vol. I. [–II].
London, Printed for F. Newbery … 1766.
Second edition, published two months after the first, printed by William Strahan in 1000 sets, and revised throughout by Goldsmith, with more than 450 new substantive readings, nearly all of them accepted by Arthur Friedman as authorial and admitted into the definitive Oxford text (Collected Works,...
£850
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GOODWIN, Thomas.
Romanae Historiae Anthologia … An English exposition of the Roman Antiquities wherein many Roman and English...
London, R.W. for Peter Parker, 1661.
A wholly unsophisticated Restoration sammelband of three popular seventeenth-century schoolbooks.
£850
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[GRANT, Charles, Vicomte de Vaux.]
Recueil d’Essais, ou précis des opinions, et des mémoires, du Vte de *** …
A Londres: De l’Imprimerie de T. Spilsbury & Fils. 1793.
An interesting tract volume, containing the scarce collected thoughts of Charles Grant, vicomte de Vaux (a subscriber’s copy), a fine illustrated guide to Nîmes and the Pont du Gard, and three pamphlets relating to a controversy in the medical faculty in Edinburgh.
£1500
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GUAZZO, Marco.
Historie di M. Marco Guazzo di tutti i fatti degni di memoria nel mondo successi dal 1524 sino a l’anno 1549....
Venice, Giolito, 1549.
First edition thus, this copy owned by the future Pope Clement XII, of a remarkable history of recent and contemporary events, first published in 1540 and here updated by almost ten years, resuming the account of world event and Italian politics and including references to American history from 1522.
£3600
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[HAKEWILL, William].
The Manner of holding Parliaments in England, collected forth of our ancient Records … With the stately...
[London,] Printed in the Yeare, 1641.
First (and only lifetime) edition, signed on the title-page by the notorious forger of ‘Shakespeare’s Library’, William Henry Ireland (1775–1835).
£950
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HALL, Major Herbert Byng.
The Adventures of a Bric-a-Brac Hunter …
London: Tinsley Brothers … 1868.
First edition of a charming travel guide to Europe for the dilletante porcelain collector; some of the sketches that make up the book first appeared in the Belgravia magazine.
£275
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HAZLITT, William.
Conversations of James Northcote, Esq., R.A. …
London: Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley … 1830.
First edition of Hazlitt’s final book, an inflammatory collection of gossip published just weeks before his death. ‘All the ill-nature in the book is Northcote’s; and all, or almost all, the talent’s, Hazlitt’s’ (Examiner, May 1833).
£200
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HAZLITT, William.
Conversations of James Northcote, Esq., R.A. …
London: Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley … 1830.
First edition of Hazlitt’s final book, an inflammatory collection of gossip published just weeks before his death. ‘All the ill-nature in the book is Northcote’s; and all, or almost all, the talent, Hazlitt’s’ (Examiner, May 1833).
£250
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HEBER, Reginald, and Nicolas BARKER (editor).
A Letter from India.
The Roxburghe Club, 2020.
'I do not expect that with fair prospects of eminence at home, you should go to the Ganges for a mitre,’ wrote Sir Charles Watkin Williams Wynn, President of the Board of Commissioners for Indian Affairs, in 1819 to Reginald Heber at Hodnet in Shropshire, but in vain. Despite a growing reputation...
£100
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HERODOTUS.
Historiae Libri IX: et de vita Homeri libellus. Illi, ex interpretatione Laurentio Vallae adscripta; hic ex interpretatione...
Frankfurt, Heirs of Andreas Wechel (Claude de Marne and Johann Aubry), 1594.
Freidrich Sylberg’s edition of Herodotus in the Latin translation by Lorenzo Valla, based on the text published by Estienne in 1566, along with extracts from the Greek physician Ctesias’s Persika, a history of Persia, and Indika, the first book to be devoted entirely to India, Estienne’s...
£1500
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HILL, Richard, Sir.
Logica Wesleiensis: or, the Farrago double distilled. With an heroic Poem in Praise of Mr. John Wesley …
London: Printed for E. and C. Dilly … J. Matthews … and W. Harris … 1773.
First and only edition, a somewhat eccentric reproof of Wesley’s increasingly strident attacks on Calvinism (and on Hill himself).
£575
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HILL, Rowland.
Journal of a Tour through the North of England and Parts of Scotland. With Remarks on the present State of the established...
London: Printed by T. Gillet … and sold at Surr[e]y Chapel; also by T. Chapman [and seven others in London, Edinburgh, and Glasgow]. 1799
First edition, an account of a Scottish tour conducted in July –September 1798 by the eccentric evangelical preacher Rowland Hill, followed by lengthy remarks on the Scottish church in a letter to the Baptist minister James Haldane. There is another issue with the title Journal through the North...
£325
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[HILL, ‘Sir’ John].
A Night Scene at Ranelagh on Wednesday 6th of May 1752. Thus I bore my point; six rogues in buckram let...
[London], May 29 Publish’d … by H. Carpenter … [1752]
Sole edition. The self-styled ‘Sir’ John Hill, sometime a physician and an actor, is best known for the ‘Paper War’ in 1751-2 between his ‘Inspector’ columns in the London Daily Journal and Fielding’s Covent-Garden Journal. It began in good humour but soon turned to real antagonism...
£650
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[HILL, ‘Sir’ John, attributed author].
The Oeconomy of Human Life. Part the Second. Translated from an Indian Manuscript, found...
London: Printed for M. Cooper ... 1751.
First edition of this opportunistic work by the self-styled ‘Sir’ John Hill (so attributed in ESTC). It purports to be the sequel to Robert Dodsley’s highly successful The Oeconomy of Life (1750; sometimes attributed to P. D. Stanhope, Earl of Chesterfield), and is written in the same poetic prose...
£350
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HOLE, Richard.
Remarks on the Arabian Nights’ Entertainment; in which the Origin of Sinbad’s Voyages, and other oriental Fictions,...
London: Printed for T. Cadell, Junior, and W. Davies, Successors to Mr. Cadell … 1797.
First edition of a whimsical but erudite treatise ‘first read at the meeting of a Literary Society in Exeter’, where members included Richard Polwhele. After initial scepticism, Hole’s research led him to conclude the narratives had a basis in fact. Hole went on to write a parallel work on Homer,...
£650
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HUME, David, [and Octavie BELOT, translator].
Histoire de la maison de Tudor sur le trône d’Angleterre … traduit...
Amsterdam [i.e. Paris], 1763.
A very fine set of the first French edition of Hume’s history of Tudor England, translated by the Parisian widow Octavie Belot (1719–1805, née Guichard), who supported herself with income from her translations, and through her work developed a friendship with Hume.
£600
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HYGINUS Gromaticus, attributed, and POLYBIUS.
De Castris Romanis, quae extant. Cum notis & animadversionibus …
Amsterdam, Jodocus Pluymer, 1660.
First edition thus, with annotations by the politician Radboud Herman Scheele (1622–1662).
£1000
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JEFFERIES, Richard.
Hodge and his Masters …
London, Smith, Elder, & Co. … 1880.
First edition, an influential volume of sketches of rural life, collected from Jefferies’ articles in the Wiltshire and Gloucestershire Standard. Jefferies (1848-1887) had published his first novel The Scarlet Shawl in 1874, after some years as a rural newspaperman; with Hodge and his Masters...
£450
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[JEFFREYS, George, first Baron Jeffreys].
The Life and Character of the late Lord Chancellor Jefferys [sic] ...
London: Printed by A. Moore ... 1725.
First edition of an uncomplimentary life of the notorious Judge Jeffreys, who presided at the trial of Titus Oates. The author, according to the introduction, was a ‘Practicer at the Bar’ recently deceased, who had lived to a good age and was ‘well acquainted with all the Chancellor’s Proceedings,...
£400
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JESUS, Carlos Augusto Montalto de.
Historic Macao …
Hong Kong, Kelly & Walsh, 1902.
First edition of an important history of Macao by the Macanese scholar Montalto de Jesus (1863–1927), a fellow of the Geographical Society of Lisbon and a member of the China branch of the Royal Asiatic Society.
£950