English Literature
Contact Donovan Rees or Zach Larsen
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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AIKEN, Conrad.
Thee.
New York, George Braziller, 1967.
First trade edition, inscribed ‘For Geoffrey and Joyce [Bridson] / this little hymn of love / from Conrad / 1968’.
£250
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AIKEN, Conrad.
Selected Poems.
New York, Oxford University Press, 1964.
Second printing (first 1961), inscribed: ‘For Geoffrey from Conrad and Savannah with a Hosanna 1968’. Born in Savannah, Georgia, Aiken spent winters there later in his life. It was in Savannah in April 1968 that Bridson recorded the unbroadcast interviews which provide a valuable insight into...
£150
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[ANON.]
Quia Amore Langueo.
[Colophon:] Chiswick, Caradoc Press, 1902.
One of 250 copies on paper (there were also 20 on vellum), printed from a fifteenth-century manuscript at Lambeth Palace Library.
£75
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[ANON].
Elogio del corno. Dell‘ autore della felice produzione italiana intitolata Della Necessità ed Utilità dei Debiti.
Venice, Stamperia Graziosi, 1796.
Only edition, as far as we can tell unrecorded, of this anonymously published poem in praise of the horn. Although ostensibly a chaste work extolling the virtues of the instrument, there is enough to suggest that the poet may have been thinking along less musical lines; the horn, we are repeatedly told,...
£275
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ANSELMI, Giorgio, the younger.
Georgii Anselmi nepotis Epigrammaton libri septem. Sosthyrides. Peplum Palladis. Aeglogae...
Venice, Maffeo Pasini, September 1528.
The definitive edition of the epigrams of Giorgio Anselmi, grandson of the astrologer and music theorist of the same name, with several epigrams on his grandfather’s lost works on magic and the occult.
£875
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ARISTOTLE.
Αριστοτελους περι ποιητικης: Aristotelis de poetica liber ex versione Theodori Goulstoni. Lectionis...
Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1780.
Large-paper issue of the first Winstanley edition, handsomely bound. The first work published by the Oxford historian and classicist Thomas Winstanley (1749–1823), subsequently Camden Professor of History and Laudian Professor of Arabic, this edition of Aristotle’s De poetica was based...
£675
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ARMINESI, Rocco degli.
Attila flagelum Dei, tradotto dalla vera cronica per Rocco degli Arminesi padovano. Ove si narra come detto...
Venice, Omobon Bettanino, [mid-eighteenth century].
Very rare eighteenth-century edition of a popular and best-selling poem on Attila the Hun.
£600
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ARNOLD, Edwin.
Enfin: A Poem, hitherto unpublished, by Sir Edwin Arnold.
New York, printed by Thomas Perry Stricker for Julian Buddolph Arnold, 1936.
First edition, one of only fifty copies hand-printed by T. Perry Sticker, presentation copy from the editor (the author’s son) and accompanied by his autograph note regarding the printing and planned circulation of the poem.
£350
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A[RNOLD, Matthew].
The Strayed Reveller, and other Poems. By A.
London: B. Fellowes …1849
First edition of Arnold’s first book, apart from the Rugby and Oxford prize poems Alaric at Rome and Cromwell. To conceal his authorship as ‘A.’ suggests a certain reticence about the volume, even though it contains a number of his finest early poems, including ‘The Forsaken Merman’. Only 500...
£600
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AUDEN, Wystan Hugh.
Louis MacNeice, a memorial Address, delivered at All Souls, Langham Place on 17 October, 1963.
Privately printed for Faber & Faber, [1963].
First edition, one of 250 copies, of Auden’s memorial address for Louis MacNeice, with the printed order of service and newspaper cuttings of poems on MacNeice, including ‘The Cave of Making’ by Auden (The Listener, 1 October 1964).
£150
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BEARDSLEY, Aubrey, art editor; Henry HARLAND, literary editor.
The Yellow Book. An Illustrated Quarterly. Volume...
London [– & New York], Elkin Mathews & John Lane [– John Lane, The Bodley Head], and Boston, Copeland & Day, April 1894 [− April 1897].
An excellent set of the first edition of The Yellow Book, the decade-defining illustrated quarterly that captured the spirit of decadence and aestheticism and gave its name to ‘the yellow nineties’.
£2000
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BEATTIE, James.
Original Poems and Translations.
London: Printed [by F. Douglas, Aberdeen?]; and sold by A. Millar, 1760.
First edition of Beattie’s first collection. It is always described as his first book, but it is in fact preceded by an unique Elegy on Mrs Walker (1759), discovered by us in 1991 and now in the National Library of Scotland (but still not listed by ESTC).
£450
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BEAUMONT, Joseph.
Psyche: or Loves Mysterie in XX. Canto’s: displaying the Intercourse betwixt Christ and the Soule …
London, Printed by John Dawson for George Boddington, 1648.
First edition of this lengthy religious epic representing the journey of the personified Soul from England to the Holy Land and back, written by Beaumont, one of the Royalist fellows ejected from Cambridge in 1644.
£1250
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BLACKMORE, Richard, Sir.
King Arthur. An Heroick Poem. In twelve Books … to which is annexed an Index, explaining the...
London, Awnsham and John Churchil, and Jacob Tonson, 1697.
First edition. Blackmore’s first Arthurian epic Prince Arthur (1695), modelled after the Aeneid and based on Geoffrey of Monmouth, proved a commercial if not critical success. Arthur was a transparent parallel to William III, and William presented Blackmore with a gold medal and...
£650
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BRACCIOLINI, Francesco.
Della croce racquistata, poema heroico libri XV.
Paris, René Ruelle, 1605.
First edition of Francesco Bracciolini’s epic poem modelled on Tasso’s Gerusalemme liberata (1591), narrating the recovery of the True Cross by the seventh-century Byzantine Emperor Heraclius from the Persian Emperor Khosrow II, and its return to Jerusalem in 629–630 AD. It is possible...
£1500
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BROME, Alexander.
Songs and other Poems … The second Edition corrected and enlarged.
London, Printed for Henry Brome … 1664.
Second edition, adding much new material including the poems ‘To his friend Thomas Stanley Esq. on his Odes’, ‘Cromwell’s Panegyrick’, and the salacious ‘Record in Rhyme’; eight songs; and some new commendatory verses in addition to the one by Isaak Walton. Also new is a commendatory letter...
£500
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BROWN, Arthur Henry.
Autograph manuscript notebook mainly of Christmas carols.
[Brentwood?, 1864–87].
An autograph manuscript notebook composed primarily of Christmas carols, compiled carefully over some twenty-five years from various sources including manuscripts in the British Museum, early printed books, and contemporary books and periodicals.
£450
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BROWNING, Elizabeth Barrett.
Poems before Congress …
London: Chapman and Hall … 1860.
First edition of a slender collection of seven poems on the cause of Italian independence, and one attacking slavery in the United States (‘A Curse for a Nation’). The Congress of the title had been planned for Paris in January 1860, but Austria withdrew on learning that Napoleon III meant to use...
£200
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[BROWN, Thomas, M.D.].
The Bower of Spring, with other Poems … Edinburgh: Printed for Archibald Constable and Co. and Longman,...
Edinburgh: Printed for Archibald Constable and Co. and Longman, Hurst Rees, Orme and Brown, London. 1817
First edition. Brown was professor of Moral Philosophy at Edinburgh and a prolific versifier (‘among the few Classical Writers of this scribbling generation’ according to the Edinburgh Review – for which Brown was a regular contributor).
£225
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[BYRON, George Gordon, Lord].
Lara, a Tale. [and] Jacqueline, a Tale [by Samuel Rogers].
London, Printed for John Murray …, 1814.
First edition, Randolph’s fourth variant (with the crooked roman numeral on p. 82 and the fallen period on p. 20). By 1814 Byron was heavily pressed by debts, having previously refused payment for his poems. For Lara, the fourth of Byron’s Levantine poems, published on the back of The...
£400