English Literature
Contact Donovan Rees or Zach Larsen
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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[JUSTICES OF THE PEACE.]
The Boke of Justices of Peas the Charge with all the Processe of the Cessions, Warrantes Supercedias &...
[Colophon: London, Richard Pynson], [1505–6?].
First edition(?), very rare, of the first printed guide for Justices of the Peace, issued with a short guide to land law.
£27500
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LACTANTIUS.
Opera.
[Venice,] Vindelinus de Spira, 1472.
Magnificent incunable edition of the works of Lactantius, a fine product of the first Venetian press, established in 1469 by Johannes de Spira and continued by his brother Vindelinus from 1470 until 1473. This was the fifth impression of the works of Lactantius, the hugely successful North African...
£25000
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JONSON, Benjamin.
The Workes …
London, Will Stansby, 1616.
An excellent set of the canonical Ben Jonson, the first collection of English plays in the proud format of a folio and the direct fore-runner of Shakespeare’s folios, here found with both the first (1616) and the corrected second editions (1640) of Volume I, and the first edition of Volume II[-III]...
£21000
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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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GIBBON, Edward.
The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
London, W. Strahan & T. Cadell, 1776–88.
First editions of all six volumes of Gibbon’s ‘masterpiece of historical penetration and literary style’ (PMM). The first volume here is of the second variant (of two), with the errata corrected as far as p. 183 and X4 and a4 so signed. The first edition of volume I (1000 copies, published...
£14000
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DONNE, John.
Devotions upon Emergent Occasions, and severall Steps in my Sicknes ...
London, Printed for Thomas Jones … 1627.
Third (and last lifetime) edition of Donne’s most familiar prose work, composed during his convalescence in 1623–4 from the ‘spotted Feaver’ which nearly killed him. It consists of twenty-three ‘Stationes, sive Periodi in Morbo’, each comprising a meditation, expostulation, and prayer.
£13500
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NISSEN, Peter.
‘Carl Hagenbeck’s Zoologischer Circus’
c. 1891.
A rare portfolio of live animal scenes from Carl Hagenbeck’s famous ‘zoological circus’; a wonderful hybrid of the real and the surreal in zoological and photographic history.
£12000
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[OXFORD UNIVERSITY.]
Pietas Universitatis Oxoniensis in obitum serenissimi Regis Georgii II. et gratulatio in augustissimi Regis...
Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1761.
First edition, one of fifty copies on large paper, an exceptional survival in the most luxurious (and fragile) of presentation bindings: full purple velvet with gold-fringed purple silk ties, typically reserved for a handful or fewer of royal copies.
£10000
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MARKHAM, Gervase.
Cavalarice, or the English Horseman: Contayning all the Art of Horse-manship, asmuch as is necessary for any...
London, Edward Allde for Edward White, [1616 –] 1617.
A beautiful copy of the second edition, ‘corrected and augmented’, of Markham’s Cavalarice, exceptionally well-preserved in a contemporary binding, from the library of the antiquary Sir John Marsham.
£9750
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[MONTEMAYOR, Jorge de, and Gaspar GIL POLO.]
The Troublesome and Hard Adventures in Love. Lively setting forth, the Feavers, the...
Alsop ... 1652 [but 1651].
The rare second edition of a text of 1594 known in a single imperfect copy (STC 153.3).
£7500
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MATURIN, Charles.
Melmoth the Wanderer: a Tale … Edinburgh, Archibald Constable and Company
London, Hurst, Robinson, and Co., 1820.
First edition, with excellent provenance, of what is often considered alongside Frankenstein as the supreme masterpiece of the Gothic genre.
£7500
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K[IRKE], J[ohn].
The Seven Champions of Christendome. Acted at the Cocke-pit, and at the Red-Bull in St. Johns Streete, with a...
London, J. Okes, and are to be sold by James Becket, 1638.
First edition of this play based on Richard Johnson’s popular romance of 1596, characteristic of the spectacle-dramas staged at the Red Bull, where John Kirke was an actor.
£6500
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[GOETHE.]
REICHARDT, Johann Friedrich. Goethe’s Lieder, Oden, Balladen und Romanzen mit Musik von J.F. Reichardt. Erste...
Leipzig, Breitkopf & Härtel, [1809–11].
Very rare first complete edition of Reichardt’s musical settings of Goethe’s poetry, comprising 128 settings of which thirty-nine appear here for the first time.
£6500
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[COTTLE, Joseph.]
Poems, containing John the Baptist. Sir Malcolm and Alla, a Tale, shewing to all the World what Woman’s Love...
Bristol, Printed by Bulgin and Rosser, for J. Cottle, Bookseller … and G. G. and J. Robinson … London, 1795.
First edition. The Bristol bookseller Joseph Cottle (1770-1853) had been introduced to Coleridge and Southey by Robert Lovell in 1794 when the two poets ‘were in Bristol courting the Fricker sisters and preparing for Pantisocracy (as they called their scheme to marry and set up a community on...
£6000
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ERASMUS, Desiderius.
Collectanea adagiorum.
[(Colophon:) Strasbourg, Matthias Schürer, 1519.]
Intensely annotated copy of a lifetime edition of Erasmus’ repository of Greek and Latin proverbs. The first version of the Adagia, containing about eight hundred maxims, had been published in 1500. Erasmus continued to add to his thesaurus for over thirty years, the success of this...
£5850
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GALLICO, Paul.
An archive of thirty-four scrapbooks compiled by Gallico.
1928–1972.
A lovingly and meticulously compiled archive of the writing career of the novelist Paul Gallico. The scrapbooks are arranged chronologically and by book/film with letters, telegrams, publicity materials, photographs and ephemera neatly intermingled with copies of reviews and reactions from local,...
£5500
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FULBECKE, William.
An Historicall Collection of the continuall Factions, Tumults, and Massacres of the Romans and Italians during...
London, Printed for William Ponsonby. 1601.
First edition. Fulbecke’s Historicall Collection ‘was a narrative history of the last years of the Roman republic and it is significant as one of the very few attempts by a Renaissance Englishman to write such a work … An interesting attempt to weave together such often-contradictory...
£5250
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HALLAM, Arthur Henry.
Remains, in Verse and Prose …
[London,] Printed by W. Nicol, 1834.
First edition, a presentation copy from the editor, the historian Henry Hallam, to his late son’s friend and fellow Cambridge ‘Apostle’ James Spedding. The prefatory memoir by Hallam senior includes a long letter from Spedding (‘one of his most valued friends’) (pp. xx-xxvi), here...
£5000
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NABBES, Thomas.
Microcosmus. A Morall Maske, presented with generall liking, at the private House in Salisbury Court, and heere...
London, Printed by Richard Oulton for Charles Greene … 1637.
First edition of an allegorical morality play (the Elements, the Senses, Love, Fear, Hope, Melancholy, et al.) which ‘may be the first English masque presented in a theatre with moveable scenery’ (Pforzheimer Catalogue).
£5000
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NAVARRETE, Domingo Fernández.
Tratados historicos, politicos, ethicos, y religiosos de la monarchia de China. Descripcion breve...
Madrid, Juan Garcia Infançon for Florian Anisson, 1676.
Scarce first edition, one of the most important early studies of Chinese history, religion, philosophy, and culture, by the Spanish Dominican Domingo Navarrete (d. 1689).
£4750