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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MARSHAK, Samuil Iakovlevich, and Vladimir Vasil’evich LEBEDEV.
Багаж [Baggage].
Leningrad, Lendetgiz, 1935.
Ninth edition (first published 1927) of one of Marshak’s best-known children’s stories, with striking illustrations by Lebedev. A train carriage, assorted luggage, and a dog make for an adventure to be remembered.
£1000
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MARSHALL, W.
Monsell Digby. A Novel, in three Volumes ...
London: Remington and Co. ... 1880.
First edition. Set in industrial and rural Lancashire against the background of the economic unrest of 1815, Monsell Digby follows the fortunes of a number of young men caught up in a murderous Luddite riot and its aftermath. Not in NUC and Supplement; UCLA and Texas only on OCLC. Wolff 4582.
£400
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MARTINEAU, Harriet.
British Rule in India; a historical Sketch …
London: Smith, Elder and Co … 1857.
First edition. Martineau wrote regularly for the Daily News from 1851-66, and produced nearly 1600 leaders in which she addessed international issues such as the American Civil War, and Britain’s position in the West Indies, Ireland and India. Her articles on India contributed to this work,...
£150
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MARTIN, Theodore, Sir.
Horace and his Friends. Two Lectures delivered at the Edinburgh Philosophical Institution …
Printed for private Circulation. 1881.
First editions of two privately-printed pamphlets by the poet, translator and biographer Theodore Martin (1816–1909) – presentation copies, to the Scottish journalist John Skelton, a frequent contributor to Blackwood’s Magazine (as was Martin).
£400
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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
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MEAD, Richard.
A Short Discourse concerning pestilential Contagion, and the Methods to be used to prevent it … The third Edition.
London: Printed [by William Bowyer] for Sam. Buckley … and Ralph Smith … 1720.
‘Third edition’ of the most famous medical tract on the plague scare of 1720-1, written at the request of James Craggs, the secretary of State following the bubonic outbreak in Marseilles in late 1719. There were seven London editions within the year, those from the third on being re-impressions...
£375
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MEDINA POMAR, Duke de.
Fashion and Passion or, Life in Mayfair … by the Duke de Pomar… Author of “The Honeymoon” and “Through...
London: Chapman & Hall … 1877.
Second edition (first published in 1876) of this wildly-popular novel of London society, published after the first edition sold out in two months. It follows the fortunes of the beautiful Señorita Consuelo and her lover Alfredo, who meet on a small-trader passage from Bilbao to London. Consuelo’s...
£125
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[MEIN, Robert.]
A Nominal Encomium on the Election of Magistrates at Michaelmass 1764.
[Edinburgh, 1764.]
First edition, very rare, a poem celebrating both the election of James Stuart of Binend as Lord Provost of Edinburgh, and the plans for the construction of Edinburgh New Town, of which building was to commence in 1767. Typically for Mein he anagrammatizes his subject as ‘A Just Master’,...
£450
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MELECRINIS, Maria Teresa.
Le voci del cuore a Maria Teresa Melecrinis dei baroni di Ioppolo e Coccorino che a di 6 luglio 1846...
Naples, stamperia dell' Iride, 1846.
Very rare collection of odes and sonnets composed to mark the entry of Maria Teresa Melecrinis into the Benedictine monastery of San Paolo at Sorrento.
£175
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MEREDITH, George.
One of our Conquerors ... In three Volumes ...
London: Chapman and Hall ... 1891.
First edition of a ‘striking study of marital misery’ (Sutherland). Sadleir 1700.
£400
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MEREDITH, George.
One of our Conquerors ... In three Volumes ...
London: Chapman and Hall ... 1891.
First edition of a ‘striking study of marital misery’ (Sutherland). Sadleir 1700.
£300
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MEREDITH, George.
Poems …
London: John W. Parker and Son … [1851].
First edition of Meredith’s first book, which he brought out at his ‘own risk, losing £50 or £60 on the venture’. ‘Not surprisingly he acquired a strong distate for what he later regarded as juvenilia with direct relationship to his first marriage’ (Collie), and there is some suggestion that...
£700
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MEREDITH, George.
Modern Love, and Poems of the English Roadside, with Poems and Ballads.
London: Chapman & Hall, 1862.
First edition of a major Victorian collection of poems. The title poem, a daring and innovative work for its day, adapts the sonnet sequence tradition (though in poems of sixteen lines) to the emotional realities of a failed contemporary marriage, tracing the course of estrangement as love gives way...
£450
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[MEREDITH, Royston].
Mr. Steele detected: or, the poor and oppressed Orphan’s Letters to the great and arbitrary Mr. Steele;...
London: Printed for John Morphew … 1714.
First and only edition: a fulminating attack on The Ladies Library. Written by a Lady. Published by Mr. Steele (1714), now known to be a curious adaptation by Bishop Berkeley of Jeremy Taylor’s devotional classics, The Rule and Exercise of Holy Living and Holy Dying, in ‘large...
£950
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MILBANK, Augustus Sussex.
A Treatise upon the political & social Condition of Europe, from the Fall of the Roman Empire, down to...
[Richmond, M. Bell for] London, Messrs Hatchard & Son, and Richmond, M. Bell, 1847.
First and only edition of a rare Yorkshire-printed treatise of social history by an amateur historian and educational enthusiast, inscribed by the author to the Countess of Sandwich.
£125
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MITCHISON, Naomi; Wyndham LEWIS, illustrator.
Beyond this Limit …
[London,] Jonathan Cape, [1935].
First edition. This was Lewis’s only collaboration with Mitchison but she arranged for the publication of his Left Wings over Europe the following year, and they remained friends until his death. 32 designs by Lewis served as the inspiration for Mitchison’s narrative.
£75
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MOLAJONI, Bartolomeo.
Alla neogama donzella Marianna Molajoni negli Sforza, Bartolomeo Molajoni germano dirigge il seguente sonetto...
Viterbo, brothers Poggiarelli, 1811.
Seemingly unrecorded sonnet addressed to the newlywed Marianna Molajoni by her brother Bartolomeo and dedicated to the sottoprefetto of Viterbo, Giulio Zelli Pazzaglia.
£275
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[MONCRIEFF, Thomas].
Memoirs concerning the ancient Alliance between the French and Scots, and the Privileges of the Scots in France....
Edinburgh, Printed by W. Cheyne, and sold by W. Gordon, and other Booksellers in Town. 1751.
First edition. The ancient alliance between Scotland and France, forged in the Middle Ages, some historians say as early as the reign of Charlemagne, was frequently invoked in the fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Memoirs begins with an excerpt from the treaty of 1326 between Charles IV...
£350
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MOORE, George.
Manuscript commonplace book of poems, songs, prayers, and letters.
1805-1855.
An appealing commonplace book of verses and songs, with occasional prayers and letters, mostly written by George Moore (1794–1854), a London soda water manufacturer and amateur poet who was murdered by the notorious French revolutionary Emmanuel Barthélemy (1823–1855).
£550
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[MOORE, Thomas.]
The Fudge Family in Paris. Edited by Thomas Brown, the Younger …
London: Printed for Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown … 1818.
First edition, the comic result of a trip to France with Samuel Rogers, ‘a set of verse epistles attributed to writers ranging from a servile creature of the tories to a passionate champion of Ireland, with some light relief from Miss Biddy Fudge, a young lady of fashion’ (ODNB). It was very...
£125