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.

  1. TENNYSON, Alfred, Lord.

    The Cup and the Falcon.

    London: Macmillan and Co. 1884.

    First published edition, preceded by a ‘trial’ edition of 1882 recorded by Wise as surviving in one known copy – in his own collection. The Cup was first performed in 1881 with Sir Henry Irving and Ellen Terry. Wise, Tennyson 146; Tinker 2096.

    £75

  2. TENNYSON, Alfred, Lord.

    Locksley Hall Sixty Years after etc.

    London: Macmillan and Co. … 1886.

    First edition. Wise, Tennyson 156; Tinker 2098.

    £60

  3. TENNYSON, Alfred Lord.

    The Princess: a Medley … Fourth edition.

    London: Edward Moxon … 1851.

    Fourth edition, with ‘changes of very considerable importance’ (Wise), written when Tennyson was honeymooning with the Marshalls in 1850. The Princess (first 1847) is the only volume of poetry that Tennyson was to publish in the later 1840s, while finishing In Memoriam (1850). The poem...

    £275

  4. TENNYSON, Alfred, Lord.

    A Welcome …

    London: Edward Moxon & Co. … 1863.

    Second edition, distinguished from the first by the hollow diamond at the centre of the French rule beneath the title.

    £40

  5. TENNYSON, Alfred, Lord.

    Enoch Arden, etc. …

    London, [Bradbury & Evans for] Edward Moxon & Co., 1864.

    First edition, an association copy belonging to James Aubrey Garth Marshall and given by him to his daughter Julia Mary Garth Marshall (later O’Brien).

    £175

  6. TENNYSON, Alfred, Lord.

    Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington…

    London: Edward Moxon … 1852.

    First edition of Tennyson's ode to the Duke of Wellington; one of his earliest Laureate poems, it was, of course, a patriotic piece, but also, as a Horatian ode in English, a notable technical achievement.

    £100

  7. TENNYSON, Alfred, Lord. 

    In Memoriam. 

    London, Edward Moxon … 1850.

    First edition, first issue, with the misprints on page 2 (‘the sullen tree’ for ‘thee sullen tree’) and page 198 (‘baseness’ for ‘bareness’). 

    £950

  8. TENNYSON, Arthur, Lord.

    Enoch Arden, etc.

    London: Edward Moxon & Co. … 1864.

    First edition, the issue with the earliest (August) state of Moxon’s inserted eight-page catalogue.

    £175

  9. THACKERAY, William Makepeace. 

    The Virginians, a tale of the last century. 

    London, Bradbury & Evans, November 1857 [– October 1859].

    First edition in the original monthly parts of Thackeray’s American sequel to Henry Esmond

    £600

  10. THACKERAY, William Makepeace. 

    Vanity Fair: A novel without a hero … with illustrations on steel and wood by the author. 

    London, Bradbury & Evans, 1848. 

    First edition in book form, with the traditional first-state characteristics, including: no street address in the imprint on the verso of the title-page; dedication leaf in small type with last line measuring 2⅛”; heading on page [1] in shaded rustic type; woodcut of the Marquis of Steyne...

    £1500

  11. TO THE PARLIAMENT OF ENGLAND,

    who are in Place to do Justice, and to break the Bonds of the oppressed. A Narrative of the cruel,...

    London, Printed for Thomas Simmons …, 1659.

    First edition, rare, a list of Quaker victims of persecution in Ireland with details of their sufferings. The pamphlet was published and undersigned by a group of the victims including the country’s reputed first Quaker, William Edmondson, and Thomas Holme, who went on to publish A Brief...

    £300

  12. TO THE REVEREND

    and merry Answerer of Vox Cleri. To be left at Mr. Brabazon Aylmer’s at the Three Pigeons in Cornhill. With a Bundle.

    [London, s.n., 1690.]

    First and only edition. Attempts to revise the Book of Common Prayer in the wake of the 1689 Toleration Act found opposition in, among others, the Exeter clergyman Thomas Long. His Vox cleri, or, The Sense of the Clergy, concerning the making of Alterations in the established Liturgy (1690)...

    £150

  13. THOMAS, Dylan.

    Under Milk Wood. A Play for Voices …

    London, J.M. Dent & Sons, 1954.

    First edition, first impression, our copy from the library of BBC radio producer D.G. Bridson, with a loosely inserted stereotype letter from the poet John Berryman about the last days and the death of Dylan Thomas.

    £1500

  14. THOMAS, Dylan, and Sir Peter Blake, illustrator.

    Under Milk Wood: A Play for Voices.

    London: Apple Litho (Bristol) Ltd. for Enitharmon Editions and Queen Anne Press, 2013.

    De Luxe edition, number 61 of 100 copies with a signed print by Blake. This finely-produced edition was published to mark the centenary of Dylan Thomas’s birth and celebrates the culmination of over twenty-five years of work by Peter Blake, one of the founding fathers of British Pop Art. The...

    £975

  15. [THOMPSON, Thomas].

    The genuine tryal of Dr. Nosmoth, a physician in Pekin; for the murder of the Mandarine Tonwin … Taken in...

    London, for Mary Cooper, 1746.

    First edition, a satire, putting Dr. Nosmoth, i.e. Thomas Thompson, on trial for causing the death of ‘Mandarine Tonwin’, i.e. Thomas Winnington, the Paymaster of the Forces.

    £175

  16. THOMSON, James.

    Essays and Phantasies …

    London: Reeves and Turner … 1881.

    First edition of a volume of essays by the author of The City of Dreadful Night. Most are probably reprinted from the National Reformer, the Secularist, or Cope’s Tobacco Plant, to which ‘the laureate of pessimism’ was a regular contributor.

    £150

  17. THORNBURY, George Walter.

    Art and Nature at Home and Abroad …

    London: Hurst and Blackett, Publishers, Successors to Henry Colburn … 1856.

    First edition: an early collection of essays by Thornbury (1828-1876), a prolific (and famously cacographic) writer who is closely associated with Dickens for his work on Household Words and All the Year Round (‘one of Charles Dickens’s most valuable contributors’; Dickens, Letters,...

    £450

  18. TOMPSON, John, editor.

    English Miscellanies consisting of various Pieces of Divinity, Morals, Politicks, Philosophy and History;...

    Gottingen by Abram. Vandenhoeck, Printer and Bookseller to the University 1746.

    Second edition, revised, of John Tompson’s important English Miscellanies, expanded to almost twice the size of the first edition, including up-to-date content published since 1737.

    £300

  19. [TREATIES.]

    Volume of tracts on European treaties of peace and alliance.

    Vienna and Amsterdam, 1725-1731.

    A collection of scarce texts relating to the Peace of Vienna (1725) and subsequent treaties of Hanover (1725), Paris (1727), Seville (1729), and Vienna (1731), with contemporary manuscript additions in Italian and French clearly composed by someone in diplomatic service. The collection eloquently...

    £1750

  20. TREVLYN GRIEVE, Valda.

    High Death.

    Falkland, K.D. Duval, 1970.

    1 of 100 copies, inscribed ‘with affection and some embarrassment Valda’.

    £75