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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RICHARDSON, Joseph.
The Fugitive: a Comedy. As it is performed at the King’s Theatre, Haymarket …
London: Printed for J. Debrett … 1792.
First edition of the first play by Sheridan’s friend, the writer and politican Joseph Richardson, proprietor of the Morning Post and later of the Drury Lane Theatre (by 1796 he had a £12,000 stake); this is the second issue, with sheets K-M reset to add extra dialogue to Act V, scene I.
£100
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[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
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[RIVERS, David].
Literary Memoirs of living Authors of Great Britain, arranged according to an alphabetical Catalogue of their...
London: Printed for R. Faulder … sold also by T. Egerton … and W. Richardson … 1798.
First edition of a collection of literary biographies, including perhaps the earliest brief life of Coleridge, whose first volume of Poems had appeared in 1796:
£1500
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R., N.
Proverbs English, French, Dutch, Italian and Spanish. All Englished and alphabetically digested …
London, Printed for Simon Miller … 1659.
First and only edition of a scarce collection of idiomatic phrases and proverbs, many translated from other languages, with a selection of 114 ‘Golden sentences’ at the end.
£1750
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ROGERS, Samuel.
Recollections of the Table-Talk of Samuel Rogers. To which is added Porsoniana.
London: Edward Moxon ... 1856.
First edition of this mine of contemporary literary gossip. Rogers is among that select group of poets to have declined the laureateship, and his poetry once had an ardent fan in Byron, who saw him as a much needed antidote to the Lake poets. His most durable achievement, however, has proved to be his...
£150
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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
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ROSCOMMON, Wentworth Dillon, Earl of.
An Essay on Translated Verse …
London, Printed for Jacob Tonson … 1684.
First edition of Roscommon’s influential Essay, in heroic couplets, which owes much to Boileau and to the author’s own education in France after the attainder of his kinsman the Earl of Strafford, with an introductory poem by Dryden.
£450
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ROTH, Henry.
Call it Sleep.
London: Michael Joseph, 1963.
First English edition, first published in New York by Robert O. Ballou in 1934.
£250
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[ROYAL PRUSSIAN SOCIETY OF SCIENCES.]
Miscellanea berolinensia ad incrementum scientiarum, ex scriptis societati regiae scientiarum...
Berlin, Johann Christoph Papen, 1723.
First continuation of Leibniz’s Miscellanea berolinensia. First appearing in 1710, the publication of the Miscellanea was revived in 1723 as the official journal of the Royal Prussian Society of Sciences after the death of Leibniz, its founding President. The Continuatio comprises...
£575
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[ROZIER.]
Le rozier historial de France contenant deux roziers. Le p[re]mier rozier contient plusieurs belles rozes et boutons...
Paris, [Gilles Couteau for François Regnault,] 26 February 1522 [i.e. 1523].
First edition, the very handsome Fairfax-Murray copy, of the Rozier historial de France.
£25000
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RUFIANDER, Fabius Jocosus, pseud. [Friedrich Julius ROTTMANN].
Curiöse Inaugural Disputation von dem Recht / Natur /...
‘Teutschland, Gedruckt in denen Hundes-Tagen, 1716.’
First edition, very rare, of this satirical academic disputation on melancholy, dedicated to the author’s ‘unpleasant and universally despised’ peers in the hope of cheering them up (p. [4] trans.).
£675
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RUSKIN, John.
The stones of Venice … With illustration drawn by the author. Fourth edition.
Orpington, Kent, George Allen, 1886.
A deluxe copy, one of 220 copies, of the fourth expanded edition, printed on Van Gelder laid paper with the plates on India paper.
£375
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SANCROFT, William.
Familiar Letters of Dr. William Sancroft, late Lord Archbishop of Canterbury, to Mr. North, afterwards Sir Henry...
London, Printed for M. Cooper … and sold by Mr. Chreigton [sic] at Ipswich. 1757.
First edition: ‘pleasant, chatty, and jocose’ letters from 1652-93 (original DNB), and useful source material for the life of the nonjuring Archbishop of Canterbury.
£350
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‘SANCTA CLARA, Abraham a’, i.e. Johann Ulrich MEGERLE.
Coraggio e viltà, l’uno nella virtù, l’altra nel vizio....
Trento, Giovanni Parone, 1717.
Scarce first and only Italian edition of Abraham a Sancta Clara’s emblematic moral treatise Huy! und Pfuy! der Welt, printed in Trento with one hundred striking – albeit somewhat provincial – woodcuts after the engravings in the first German edition of 1707.
£2250
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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.
£575
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[SARPI, Paolo (pseud.).] ‘Pietro Soave POLANO’.
Historia del Concilio Tridentino di Pietro Soave Polano. Seconda...
Geneva, Pierre Aubert, 1629.
Second edition, the first to omit the extraneous additions of the 1619 edition introduced by Marco Antonio de Dominis, of the influential and groundbreaking history of the Council of Trent by Paolo Sarpi (1552–1623), described by Milton as ‘the great unmasker’.
£450
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SASSOON, Siegfried.
Nativity.
London, Faber & Gwyer, 1927.
First edition of this striking collaboration between Siegfried Sassoon and Paul Nash.
£175
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[SASSOON, Siegfried.] SURTEES, [Robert Smith]; Lionel GOUGH, editor.
Hunting Scenes from Surtees.
London, Rupert Hart-Davis, 1953.
Sassoon’s proof copy of Hunting Scenes from Surtees, with pages left blank for the inclusion of his as-yet unwritten introduction.
£850
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[SATIRE.]
‘A Letter to Julian’.
[Circa October, 1685.]
An attractive scribal copy of a ‘shotgun libel’ in verse, drawing attention to the scandals of the season at Tunbridge Wells and in London society. Captain Robert Julian had been imprisoned for a libel against Charles II in 1684-5; a number of verse satires of the time were addressed to him,...
£350