Advanced search

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.

Sort by
Author
Price
Date
Title

  1. 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

  2. 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

  3. 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

  4. [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

  5. POUND, Ezra.

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

    … London, Faber & Faber, [1951].

    First English edition, an association copy.

    £150

  6. POUND, Ezra.

    The Translations … with an Introduction by Hugh Kenner.

    London, Faber & Faber, 1953.

    First edition. Gallup A66.

    £125

  7. 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

  8. POUND, Ezra.

    Section: Rock-Drill. 85-95 de los Cantares.

    Milan, All’insegna del pesce d’oro [Scheiwiller], 1955.

    First edition, No. 347 of 500 copies, inscribed on the front free endpaper ‘To Geoffrey, “in alta stima” from D. / 6. 7. 56.’, with Bridson’s note identifying this as the actor and producer Denis Goacher.

    £450

  9. POUND, Ezra.

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

    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

  10. POUND, Ezra.

    Thrones. 96-109 de los cantares.

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

    First edition, no. 10 of 300 copies, one of the early copies with a misprint in l.9 on p. 85, cancelled in manuscript by the publisher.

    £650

  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, 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

  14. PRESENT FOR THE YOUNG (A).

    London: Printed for The Religious Tract Society … and sold at their Depository … also by J. Nisbet...

    [c. 1827]

    First edition. A finely illustrated anthology of religious verse, contemplations, and prayers for children. Pieces include poems on the seasons and stories about a Welsh Shepherd, and ‘The Hill and the Valley’, all with heavily metaphorical content.

    £175

  15. PRIOR, Matthew.

    Poems on several Occasions.

    London: Printed for Jacob Tonson … 1709.

    First authorised edition, preceded by Curll’s pirated collection of 1707. In the preface Prior complains that in Curll’s edition poems by other authors have been misattributed to him and that some of his own poems are ‘transcribed … so imperfectly, that I hardly knew them to be mine’....

    £400

  16. RAMSAY, Allan.

    The Gentle Shepherd, a Scotch Pastoral … attempted in English by Margaret Turner.

    London: Printed for the Author, by T. Bensley; and sold by G. Nicol … and by Mrs. Turner … 1790.

    First edition of this parallel-text translation of Ramsay’s Scots verse drama, a subscriber’s copy from the library of Mary, Lady Vincent, née Chiswell, wife of Sir Francis Vincent (1747–1793), resident consul at Venice.

    £600

  17. RAWLET, John.

    Poetick Miscellanies …

    London, printed for Samuel Tidmarsh, 1687.

    First edition. Writing from the isolation of Newcastle, then a rural parish in fell country, Rawlet developed a mode of religious and descriptive poetry distinctly out of step with his own age, as is acknowledged by the editor in a verse preface: ‘Reader, expect not here, the filth of th’...

    £1100

  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. ROBINSON, Mrs. Mary (Darby).

    Lyrical Tales …

    London, Printed for T. N. Longman and O. Rees … by Biggs and Co. Bristol, 1800.

    First edition, a revisionary response to Lyrical Ballads (1798) by the actress turned royal mistress turned author, Mary ‘Perdita’ Robinson, published only eight days before her death.

    £1250

  20. ROSCOMMON, Wentworth Dillon, Earl of.

    Poems … to which is added an Essay on Poetry, by the Earl of Mulgrave, now Duke of Buckingham....

    London: Printed for J. Tonson … 1717.

    First edition of this collection, notable for Richard Duke’s unfinished Review, a vehement satire in response to, and in the allegorical manner of, Absalom and Achitophel, and featuring Dryden as one of the figures satirised. According to Tonson in the preface, it was written ‘a little after the...

    £400