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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ROSCOMMON, Wentworth Dillon, Earl of.
An Essay on Translated Verse … London, Printed for Jacob Tonson … 1684.
London, Printed for Jacob Tonson … 1684
First edition. Roscommon’s influential Essay, in heroic couplets, owes much to Boileau and to the author’s own education in France after the attainder of his kinsman the Earl of Strafford. Dryden, an intimate friend and himself the translator of Boileau’s Art of Poetry in the preceding year, contributes...
£450
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SANDYS, George.
A Paraphrase upon the divine Poems …
London, At the Bell in St. Pauls Churchyard. 1638. [Colophon: London, Printed by John Legatt 1637.]
First edition, the issue with the Dedication to Charles I on the title-verso.
£900
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[SANDYS, John].
The Salopian Zealot: or, the good Vicar in a bad Mood. By John the Dipper …
Sold by G. Keith, and J. Buckland, in London;— T. Evans, Bristol; and by the Booksellers in Salop, Liverpool, &c. [1778].
First edition of a lively verse contribution to an increasingly acrimonious pamphlet war between Baptists. When Samuel Medley preached on the necessity of adult baptism, Richard De Courcy replied with his Letter to a Baptist-Minister (Shrewsbury, 1776) insisting on infant baptism. More pamphlets...
£575
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SARGENT, John.
The Mine: a dramatic Poem.
London: Printed for T. Cadell, in the Strand. 1785
First edition of Sargent’s poem on quicksilver mines, replete with subterranean gnomes. The poem was inspired by a fantastical story of misbehaving Austrian aristocrats who are forced to labour in the mines as punishment, told in letters quoted in the introduction. In the footnotes Sargent explores...
£650
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SCOTT, Sir Walter.
The Vision of Don Roderick; a Poem ... Edinburgh: Printed by James Ballantyne and Co. for John Ballantyne ...
Edinburgh, and Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, London, 1811
First trade edition, third impression (correcting the pagination), preceded by a private edition described as ‘Author’s Copy’ on the title-page.
£450
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SCOTT, Sir Walter.
The Lady of the Lake … with all his Introductions and Notes, various Readings, and the Editor’s Notes.
Edinburgh, Robert Cadell, 1851.
An attractive Scottish 'Mauchline ware' tartan binding. Mauchline ware bindings – the name comes from Smith’s boxware factory at Mauchline in Ayrshire – were made from thin wooden boards (often sycamore) decorated with tartan or pictorial designs, heavily varnished, and attached to the text...
£750
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SHAKESPEARE, [William].
The Works of Shakespeare, the text of the First Folio with Quarto variants and a selection of modern...
[Cambridge, University Press for] The Nonesuch Press, and New York, Random House, 1929 [– 1933].
First Nonesuch edition, number 220 of 1600 copies, not only handsomely printed and bound but also an important scholarly edition, collating the texts of the First Folio against variants in preceding quarto editions.
£1450
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[SHEFFIELD, John, Earl of Mulgrave, afterwards Duke of Buckingham.]
An Essay on Poetry.
London, Printed for Joseph Hindmarsh … 1682.
First edition, a verse satire in imitation of Horace’s Ars Poetica. There are indirect attacks on Rochester (‘Bawdry barefac’d, that poor pretence to Wit’), and Cowley, who has poetic fury but ‘ill expression’, while Sheffield reserves praise for Dryden, who took the blame for...
£1200
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SHELLEY, Percy Bysshe.
Queen Mab.
London: Printed and published by W. Clark ... 1821
Second (first published edition) of Shelley’s most provocative poem. The radical bookseller and pirate William Clark came across a copy of the privately-printed first edition in 1821 and brought out this unauthorized text, ‘studious in adhering to the original copy’, printing the notes in French,...
£950
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SHENSTONE, William.
The Works, in Verse and Prose… in three Volumes … Fifth Edition …
London: Printed for J. Dodsley … 1777.
Fifth edition of the Works (1764), the first edition of which was planned by Shenstone but published after his death, with Robert Dodsley’s description of Shenstone’s important garden at The Leasowes, one of the first natural landscape gardens in England and one of the most influential,...
£325
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SHEPHERD, Richard Herne.
Forgotten Books worth remembering … No. I. Studies of Sensation and Event by Ebenezer Jones …
London, Pickering & Co … 1878.
An interesting collection of ‘rare tracts’, from the library of the Scottish lawyer and journalist John Skelton, who wrote for Blackwood’s under the pseudonym ‘Shirley’.
£950
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SHERBURNE, Sir Edward.
Salmacis, Lyrian & Sylvia, Forsaken Lydia, the Rape of Helen, a Comment thereon, with severall other...
London, Printed by W. Hunt, for Thomas Dring ... 1651.
First edition of a charming book of Caroline poetry, original and translated, in a most sympathetic and well-preserved collector’s binding. This is the first issue; it was reissued in the same year under the title Poems and Translations, amorous, lusory, morall, divine, reflecting the...
£4250
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[SHIPLEY, William].
Comparative Observations on two of the Poems which were honoured with Prizes in a late Certamen at Ch. Ch....
York: Printed in theYear 1767
First edition of an undergraduate prank in which the future Dean of St. Asaph ridicules the awarding of prizes by the Dean of Christ Church and his fellow judges to two Latin poems written in honour of a visit by the Prince of Brunswick. An ironic dedication to the Dean is followed by the text of the...
£350
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SMITH, Albert.
A large archive of printed and manuscript material, including drafts of shows and lectures, including portions of...
[1820s to 1860s.]
Albert Richard Smith (1816–1860) trained as a surgeon but shortly afterwards turned to the world of letters, becoming a regular contributor to Bentley’s Miscellany and Punch; he adapted works by his friend Dickens for the theatre and edited The Man in the Moon (1847–9). ‘During...
£15000
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[SORKOČEVIĆ, Antun, also known as Antoine de SORGO.]
Fragments sur l’histoire politique et littéraire de l’ancienne...
Paris, Imprimerie de Madame Porthmann, 1839.
First edition, very scarce, of this collection of short pieces on Dubrovnik by the Croatian writer and composer Antun Sorkočević (1775–1841).
£350
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SOUTHEY, Robert.
The Lay of the Laureate. Carmen Nuptiale …
London: Printed for Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown … 1816.
First trade edition of Southey’s laureate ode on the occasion of the marriage of Princess Charlotte to Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, dedicated to her. There was also a private edition in octavo on large paper. Tinker 1962.
£200
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SPENSER, Edmund.
The Works of Edmund Spenser.
Oxford, The Shakespeare Head Press, 1930 [– 1932].
Limited edition, numbered 123 of 375 copies, of the handsome Shakespeare Head Spenser, one of the most significant works of the press.
£1250
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[SWIFT, Jonathan].
Miscellanies in Prose and Verse.
London: Printed for John Morphew ... 1711.
First edition, ordinary paper issue, the very rare first state, with G6-7 preserved (though slashed for cancellation); the cancellans was printed on A8, not here present.
£1250
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SWIFT, Jonathan.
The Works of J. S, D. D, D. S. P. D. in four Volumes … In this Edition are great Alterations and Additions;...
Dublin: Printed by and for George Faulkner, Printer and Bookseller … 1735.
First 12mo. edition of the first collected Works of Swift, preceded by octavo edition earlier in the year. Here the chronological arrangement in volumes I and II has been altered and one piece, ‘Prometheus’ (a later insertion), moved from volume IV to its correct place in volume II.
£1250