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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. LACTANTIUS.

    Opera.

    [Venice,] Vindelinus de Spira, 1472.

    Magnificent incunable edition of the works of Lactantius, a fine product of the first Venetian press, established in 1469 by Johannes de Spira and continued by his brother Vindelinus from 1470 until 1473. This was the fifth impression of the works of Lactantius, the hugely successful North African...

    £25000

  2. SMITH, Albert.

    A large archive of printed and manuscript material, including drafts of shows and lectures, including portions of...

    [1820s to 1860s.]

    Albert Richard Smith (1816–1860) trained as a surgeon but shortly afterwards turned to the world of letters, becoming a regular contributor to Bentley’s Miscellany and Punch; he adapted works by his friend Dickens for the theatre and edited The Man in the Moon (1847–9). ‘During...

    £15000

  3. DONNE, John.

    Devotions upon Emergent Occasions, and severall Steps in my Sicknes ...

    London, Printed for Thomas Jones … 1627.

    Third (and last lifetime) edition of Donne’s most familiar prose work, composed during his convalescence in 1623–4 from the ‘spotted Feaver’ which nearly killed him. It consists of twenty-three ‘Stationes, sive Periodi in Morbo’, each comprising a meditation, expostulation, and prayer.

    £13500

  4. [GOETHE.] 

    REICHARDT, Johann Friedrich.  Goethe’s Lieder, Oden, Balladen und Romanzen mit Musik von J.F. Reichardt.  Erste...

    Leipzig, Breitkopf & Härtel, [1809–11]. 

    Very rare first complete edition of Reichardt’s musical settings of Goethe’s poetry, comprising 128 settings of which thirty-nine appear here for the first time. 

    £6500

  5. [COTTLE, Joseph.]

    Poems, containing John the Baptist. Sir Malcolm and Alla, a Tale, shewing to all the World what Woman’s Love...

    Bristol, Printed by Bulgin and Rosser, for J. Cottle, Bookseller … and G. G. and J. Robinson … London, 1795.

    First edition. The Bristol bookseller Joseph Cottle (1770-1853) had been introduced to Coleridge and Southey by Robert Lovell in 1794 when the two poets ‘were in Bristol courting the Fricker sisters and preparing for Pantisocracy (as they called their scheme to marry and set up a community on...

    £6000

  6. OVIDIUS Naso, Publius, and Pedro Sánchez de VIANA, translator and commentator. 

    Las transformaciones. 

    Valladolid, Diego Fernández de Córdoba, 1589.

    First edition, a copy of notable provenance, of perhaps the most successful early Spanish translation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, by Pedro Sánchez de Viana (c. 1545–1619), a physician by training, published along with his substantial commentary. 

    £6000

  7. HALLAM, Arthur Henry. 

    Remains, in Verse and Prose … 

    [London,] Printed by W. Nicol, 1834.

    First edition, a presentation copy from the editor, the historian Henry Hallam, to his late son’s friend and fellow Cambridge ‘Apostle’ James Spedding.  The prefatory memoir by Hallam senior includes a long letter from Spedding (‘one of his most valued friends’) (pp. xx-xxvi),  here...

    £5000

  8. DONNE, John.

    Poems … with Elegies on the authors Death …

    London, Printed by M.F. for John Marriot, and are to be sold at his Shop … 1635.

    Second edition, adding seventeen new poems by Donne (and eleven false attributions), and three more elegies on his death.

    £4500

  9. SHERBURNE, Edward, Sir. 

    Salmacis, Lyrian & Sylvia, Forsaken Lydia, the Rape of Helen, a Comment thereon, with severall...

    London, W. Hunt, for Thomas Dring, 1651. 

    First edition of a charming book of Caroline poetry, original and translated, in a most sympathetic and well-preserved collector’s binding.  This is the first issue; it was reissued in the same year under the title Poems and Translations, amorous, lusory, morall, divine, reflecting the...

    £4250

  10. FLETCHER, Giles, the younger.

    Christs Victorie, and Triumph in Heaven, and Earth, over, and after Death …

    Cambridge, Printed by C. Legge. 1610.

    First edition of an important poem, a ‘worthy link’ in the chain which connects Fletcher’s great master, Spenser, with his great successor, Milton (Hugh de Selincourt, CHEL). This is the first state, with a fleur-de-lis device on the title-pages – three copies are known with the title-pages reset...

    £3500

  11. HAYLEY, William, and William BLAKE (illustrator).

    Ballads … founded on Anecdotes relating to Animals, with Prints...

    Chichester, J. Seagrave, for London, Richard Phillips, 1805.

    First edition of William Hayley’s sixteen Ballads illustrated by William Blake, with a fine provenance, plates I–III in the first state.

    £3500

  12. MILTON, John.

    Paradise Regained, Samson Agonistes, Comus, and Arcades …

    London, C. Whittingham for John Sharpe, 1819.

    A striking binding by George Mullen, who was active in Dublin from 1803 to 1846; his best bindings were produced between 1812 and 1820, when his considerable workshop, covering a very wide range of styles, catered to major Irish clients including the Marquess of Sligo. Some are signed with orange...

    £3500

  13. OVID; [Philipp GUNDEL, editor].

    Fastorum libri sex diligentissime recogniti. Addito calendario Romano venerandae vetustatis,...

    [(Colophon:) Vienna, Hieronymus Vietor and Johann Singriener for Leonhard Alantsee, 3 October 1513.]

    First and only editions, very rare, of two post-incunable Ovid recensions by Philipp Gundel, curiously bound in a strikingly archaic likely eighteenth-century binding.

    £3500

  14. 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

  15. 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

  16. POPE, Alexander.

    Windsor-Forest. To the Right Honourable George Lord Lansdown …

    London: Printed for Bernard Lintott … 1713.

    First edition of Pope’s second separately published poem, preceded by An Essay on Criticism in 1711. Written in the tradition that young poets begin with pastoral verse, Windsor-Forest, with its epigraph from Virgil’s Eclogues, was the poem that first won Swift’s regard and...

    £2750

  17. YEATS, William Butler.

    The Poems …

    London, Macmillan and Co. Ltd, 1949.

    No. 191 of 375 copies, signed, of which 25 were for private distribution. At the time of publication this was the definitive collected edition of Yeats’s poetry. Yeats had prepared the proofs and signed the limitation leaves before his death in 1939, but final publication was delayed by the war.

    £2750

  18. [RICHMOND.]

    The Belvidere: a Poem. Inscrib’d to Joseph Grove, Esq. of Richmond, in the County of Surrey …

    London: Printed in the Year 1749.

    First edition, rare (British Library and Yale only) of a very attractive description in verse of a country estate in Richmond. The first pages offer a prospect of the garden with its flowers and shrubs, shaded walks and arbours, a bower with the escutcheon over the door of the late Sir William...

    £2750

  19. D’URFEY, Thomas.

    Wit and Mirth: or Pills to purge Melancholy; being a Collection of the best merry Ballads and Songs, old and...

    London: Printed by W. Pearson, for J. Tonson ... 1719 [-20].

    The first complete edition, second issue of volumes I-V with titles altered to the familiar Wit and Mirth from Songs Compleat, 1719 (a change at the time of the publication in 1720 of volume VI, which is always entitled Wit and Mirth).

    £2250

  20. FROST, Robert.

    A collection of five Christmas Poems 1953, 1959, 1960, 1961 and 1963, all in the issues printed for distribution...

    1953-1963, see below.

    One more Brevity. New York, Spiral Press, 1953. Pp [12]; illustrations by Philip Grushkin; small stain to one page, else very good, stapled in the original wrappers, booklabel of D. G. Bridson, inscribed ‘To Geoffrey Bridson from Robert Frost after the pleasantest sort of encounter Dec 13...

    £2000