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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. POPE, [Alexander]. 

    Of the Use of Riches, an Epistle to the Right Honorable Allen Lord Bathurst. 

    London, J. Wright for Lawton Gilliver, 1732. 

    First edition, first issue, with p. 13 uncorrected and the erratum on p. 20. 

    £200

  2. 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

  3. POPE, Alexander.

    Of false Taste. An Epistle to the right honourable Richard Earl of Burlington. Occasion’d by his publishing...

    London: Printed for L. Gilliver … 1731 [1732].

    1. Third edition of Of false Taste, published on 15 January 1732, adding Pope’s long letter to Burlington in reply to ‘the clamour rais’d about this epistle’. This is the first of three issues, with the misprint ‘Cielings’ on p. 11. Griffith 267; Foxon P912.

    £850

  4. POPE, Alexander.

    The Poetical Works of Alexander Pope, with his last Corrections, Additions, and Improvements, in four Volumes,...

    London, ‘printed under the direction of J. Bell, British Library, Strand, bookseller to His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales,’ 1787...

    A good set of Pope’s works, printed for inclusion in Bell’s The Poets of Great Britain. Initially imported from Edinburgh and issued with new titles, Bell’s Poets of Great Britain was intended to provide attractive and portable works of British poets ‘from Chaucer to Churchill’,...

    £175

  5. POPE, Alexander.

    The Dunciad. With Notes variorum, and the Prologomena of Scriblerus. The second Edition, with some Additional Notes.

    London: Printed for Lawton Gilliver … 1729.

    ‘Second’ octavo edition, revised. This is Griffith’s variant d, with an extra unpaginated leaf of terminal errata (printed on the same half-sheet as the cancel P3).

    £450

  6. POPE, Alexander.

    The Temple of Fame: a Vision … London: Printed for Bernard Lintot … 1715.

    London: Printed for Bernard Lintot … 1715.

    First edition. A modernized version of Chaucer’s Hous of Fame, for which Lintot paid Pope £32 5s. Perhaps Lintot was hoping to arouse interest in the rather expensive new edition of Chaucer which is advertised here at 30 s. in sheets. Queen Anne’s licence to Urry is dated 20 July 1714, and the Proposals...

    £350

  7. POPE, Alexander.

    Letters of Mr Alexander Pope, and several of his Friends.

    London: Printed by J. Wright for J. Knapton … L. Gilliver … J. Brindley … and R. Dodsley … 1737.

    First folio edition, large paper issue, preceded by a subscribers’ edition in quarto, of the first ‘official’ version of Pope’s letters.

    £1500

  8. [POUND.] 

    Ezra Pound at Seventy.

    [New York, New Directions, 1955.] 

    A small celebratory booklet printing tributes by Auden, Cummings, Eliot, Hemingway (‘Will gladly pay tribute to Ezra but what I would like to do is get him the hell out of St. Elizabeth’s’), Archibald Macleish, Jose de Pina Martins, Marianne Moore, Norman Pearson, Spender, and Edith Sitwell.

    £30

  9. POUND, Ezra.

    The Letters … 1907-1941. Edited by D. D. Paige

    … London, Faber & Faber, [1951].

    First English edition, an association copy.

    £150

  10. POUND, Ezra.

    The Classic Anthology defined by Confucius.

    London, Faber & Faber, 1955.

    First English edition, first printing, comprising sheets of the Harvard University Press edition (1954) with a cancel Faber title-page.

    £175

  11. 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

  12. POUND, Ezra.

    Quia Pauper amavi.

    London, The Egoist Ltd, [1919].

    First edition, one of 500 ordinary copies (there were also 100 signed copies on handmade paper’, inscribed ‘Bridson’s copy / 11 Ap ’59 / Ezra Pound’. This work contained the first English publication of Cantos I–III, not printed in that order.

    £1750

  13. POUND, Ezra.

    The Literary Essays … Edited with an Introduction by T. S.

    Eliot. London, Faber & Faber, [1954].

    First edition, first impression.

    £75

  14. POUND, Ezra.

    Collected early Poems …

    London, Faber & Faber, [1977].

    First English edition.

    £50

  15. [POUND, Ezra.]

    Agenda. Twenty-first Anniversary Ezra Pound Special Issue.

    London, Agenda Editions, 1980.

    Reprinting a number of works by Pound alongside criticism. Bridson’s article ‘Italian Painting in the Cantos’, one of his last publications, appears on pp. 210-217.

    £75

  16. POUND, Ezra.

    Cantos 110–116 …

    printed & published by the Fuck You / press at a secret location in the lower east side, New York City, USA, 1967.

    Unauthorised edition (unsurprisingly), no. 261 of 300 copies. The contents are extracts and include a number of apparently unidentified lines; this piracy forced the publication of Drafts and Fragment of Cantos CX–CXVII (1969).

    £150

  17. POUND, Ezra, and Ernest FENELLOSA.

    Introduzione ai Nô, con un drama in un atto di Motokiyo: Kagekiyo.

    Milan, All’insegna del pesce d’oro [Scheiwiller], [1958].

    Third edition, translations of Pound’s ‘Introduction’ and one play from Certain Noble Plays of Japan by his daughter Mary de Rachewiltz. This third edition added ‘Un intervallo di 40 anni’ by Pound, dated November 1958.

    £30

  18. POUND, Ezra, and D.G. BRIDSON.

    ‘An Interview with Ezra Pound’ in New Directions 17. Norfolk, Conn.,

    New Directions, [1961].

    First edition, printing the majority of the interviews recorded in 1956 and broadcast in 1959. Other contributors to this issue included Kerouac, Ginsberg, and Williams.

    £100

  19. POUND, Ezra, and Giovanni GIUDICI, translator.

    H.S. Mauberley, tradotto di Giovanni Giudici con tre disegni inedita...

    Milan, all’insegna del pesce d’oro [Scheiwiller], 1959.

    First edition, no. 141 of 1000 copies, a parallel-text Italian translation of Pound’s modernist masterpiece Hugh Selwyn Mauberley (1920).

    £100

  20. POUND, Ezra, and Noel STOCK, translators.

    Love Poems of ancient Egypt.

    [New York, New Directions, 1962].

    First edition.

    £75