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.

  1. OWEN, John.

    John Owen’s Epigrams for Prince Henry. The Text of the Presentation Manuscript in the Library of Trinity College...

    Douglas, Isle of Man, published by Bernard Quaritch Ltd., 2012.

    Printed here for the first time is the text of an autograph manuscript of the epigrams which John Owen presented to Prince Henry, eldest son of James VI of Scotland (I of England), on the occasion of his becoming Prince of Wales in 1610. The small quarto, preserved at Trinity College, Cambridge, is the...

    £20

  2. [OXFORD.] 

    Carmina quadragesimalia ab Aedis Christi Oxon. alumnis composita et ab ejusdem Aedis baccalaureis determinantibus...

    Oxford, ‘E Theatro Sheldoniano,’ 1723 [– 1748]. 

    First edition of these humorous verses in Latin, composed by bachelors at Christ Church Oxford as part of scholastic Lenten disputations on natural philosophy. 

    £500

  3. PARADIN, Guillaume.

    Gulielmi Paradini Anchemani Epigrammata ...

    Lyons, Ant. Gryphius, 1581.

    First and only edition of this French historian’s poetry including verses about or addressed to Ronsard, Pontus de Tyard, Claude Rouillet, and the Lyons printers Sébastien and Antoine Gryphe, and Jean de Tournes.

    £950

  4. PARNASSIUM (The)

    : or Beauties of English Poetry. Selected from the Works of Blair, Philips, Young, Pope, Gray, Parnell … The...

    London: Printed for W. Lane … [after 1776.]

    A very scarce reissue by the enterprising William Lane, later of the Minerva Press, of A Collection of Modern Poems (London, J. James, 1762) – with a cancel title-page and a new frontispiece. The contents comprise the Love of Fame and The Last Day by Young, Gray’s Elegy, The...

    £325

  5. PAZZI, Antonio de, and Torquato TASSO. 

    Stanze inedite di Antonio de Pazzi e di Torquato Tasso in biasimo ed in lode delle...

    Venice, Picotti, 1810.

    Scarce first edition of verses ‘in blame and in praise of women’ by Antonio de Pazzi and Torquato Tasso, edited by the eminent antiquary and librarian Jacopo Morelli (1745–1819) from a previously unpublished manuscript in the Biblioteca Marciana, Venice, and dedicated to Baron Antonio Mulazzani...

    £200

  6. PEACOCK, Thomas Love.

    Rhododaphne: or the Thessalian Spell. A Poem.

    London, Printed for T. Hookham, Jun. … and Baldwin, Cradock, and Joy … 1818.

    First edition. A mythological narrative set in ancient Thessaly, Rhododaphne tells the story of the shepherd boy Anthemion, in love with the mortal girl Calliroë, and of the nymph Rhododaphne, who carries him off to her enchanted palace. When Rhododaphne is destroyed by Heavenly or Uranian...

    £1000

  7. [PEMBERTON, Henry].

    Observations on Poetry, especially the epic: occasioned by the late Poem upon Leonidas.

    London: Printed by H. Woodfall. Sold by J. Brotherton … J. Nourse … and T. Dodsley … 1738.

    First edition, a piece of literary criticism inspired by Richard Glover’s long poem Leonidas (1737), ‘a high-minded epic on the virtuous resistance by the Spartan king (perhaps an optimistic portrait of Frederick [Prince of Wales]) to the effeminate and treacherous Persian army’ (Oxford...

    £325

  8. PERSIUS; [Thomas BREWSTER, translator].

    The Satires of Persius translated into English Verse; with some occasional Notes;...

    London, Printed for A. Millar, 1751.

    Second edition, with the addition of Bayle’s life of Persius, with manuscript corrections.

    £375

  9. PICKERING, Amelia.

    The Sorrows of Werter: a Poem …

    London: Printed for T. Cadell … 1786

    First edition. Amelia Pickering’s ‘melancholy, contemplative poem’ (Todd) was one of a spate of works in English and German founded on Goethe’s novel, including poems by Charlotte Smith and Mary Robinson, both subscribers here. Pickering ‘gives to Charlotte a voice, if rather weakly moralistic,...

    £1200

  10. PIEROTTI, A. 

    Il cervello e la difesa delle donne sestine giocose ... precedute da indirizzo, e dedica in vario metro. 

    Florence, N. Fabbrini, 1842. 

    First and only edition, very rare, of this misogynistic poem by the Florentine poet Pierotti, in which he pretends to explore the female brain with reference to Galen, accusing women of, for example, greed, theft, cunning, vanity, and irascibility.  The second part is a somewhat patronising defense...

    £375

  11. PINDAR. 

    Carmina, ex editione Chr. Gottl. Heyne. 

    Oxford, N. Bliss for M. Bliss and R. Bliss [– and London, for F. & C. Rivington, J. Payne & J. Mackinlay, W.H. Lunn, Longman, Hurst,...

    An attractive Oxford-printed pocket edition of Pindar’s Odes, as edited by Christian Gottlob Heyne. 

    £175

  12. PINDAR.

    Ολγμπια Νεμεα Πγθια Ισθμια … Olympia, Nemea, Pythia, Isthmia. Una cum Latina omnium versione carmine...

    Oxford, E Teatro Sheldoniano, 1698 … London, apud. Sam. Smith & Benj. Walford.

    First edition thus, the variant with the title-page dated 1698 rather than 1697. The Greek text was edited by Richard West and Robert Welsted, and the chronology of the Olympiads provided by the Bishop of Lichfield. 

    £5250

  13. POEMS ON AFFAIRS OF STATE:

    from the Time of Oliver Cromwell, to the Abdication of K. James the Second. Written by the greatest...

    Printed in the Year 1702

    Fourth edition of this popular collection of witty verse and political satire, with the second edition of State-Poems continued (1697). Much of the poetry collected here was initially circulated in manuscript because of its political subject matter (which includes the Dutch wars, the Popish Plot, and...

    £425

  14. [POETRY.] 

    ‘Trattato della [poesia Toscana]’. 

    [Asti?, 1780-1782.] 

    A manuscript treatise on the method of composing poetry in Italian, with numerous examples from renowned authors and eight apparently unpublished poems about horse-racing, with references to Arabian, Sardinian, English, and African horses, as well as to a firework display. 

    £750

  15. [POETRY.]

    ‘Récueil de differentes pieces de vers, et chansons. A l’usage de Madame la Comtesse de Lichtervelde née Comtesse...

    [Belgium, 1777 and later].

    An interesting commonplace of verses, songs, madrigals, epigrams, carols, and fables, many of which are apparently unpublished, compiled for the use of Albertine de Cassina (1749–1816), Comtesse de Wonsheim, who married Charles de Lichtervelde (1741–1803) in 1769.

    £750

  16. POPE, Alexander.

    The Rape of the Lock. An heroi-comical Poem. In five Canto’s … The second Edition.

    London: Printed for Bernard Lintott ... 1714

    Second edition of the final text, reset throughout and now with a headpiece to each canto. Griffith 34; Foxon P943. [Bound with:]

    £1850

  17. [POPE, Alexander.] 

    The New Dunciad: As it was found in the Year MDCCXLI. With the Illustrations of Scriblerus and Notes Variorum.

    London, T. Cooper, 1742.

    Second edition (although not stated on title), published within a week of the first edition, with slight revisions to both poem and notes. A reissue in the same year with a cancel title-page acknowledges this printing as the second edition.

    £350

  18. [POPE, Alexander].

    The New Dunciad: as it was Found in the Year 1741. With the Illustrations of Scriblerus, and Notes Variorum.

    London: Printed for T. Cooper ... 1742.

    First edition. This is the first printing of Book IV of the Dunciad. Having carried satire to the brink of prosecution, Pope retired into four years of silence, broken in 1742. A reference to Colley Cibber in line 316 inaugurated Pope’s last literary quarrel, and led to the revision of the...

    £750

  19. POPE, Alexander. 

    An Essay on Man, in four Epistles to Henry St. John, Lord Bolingbroke … 

    London: Printed for Robert Jennings … by James Moyes … 1819. 

    A very fine edition, one of two hundred copies according to Lowndes.  The four plates in the text were engraved for a forthcoming parallel-text English–Portuguese edition published by Charles Whittington – the prints here being proofs before lettering.  Their inclusion along with ‘the...

    £450

  20. POPE, Alexander. 

    The Works …  Vol. I [–VI].  With explanatory Notes and Additions never before printed. 

    London, Printed for B. Lintot, 1736 [Vol. II. Printed for L. Gilliver 1735; Vol. III. Printed for H. Lintot, 1736; Vol. IV. Printed...

    A fine set of the bibliographically complicated small octavo Works, including the scarce supplementary Vol II. Part II. 

    £1750