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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MACAULEY, Auley.
A Sermon on the peculiar Advantages of Sunday Schools: preached in the Parish Church of St. Paul, Bedford, on...
London, Printed for C. Dilly … and sold by the Booksellers of Bedford, Northampton, and Leicester, for the Benefit of the Institution. [1792].
First edition of a rare sermon to promote Sunday Schools by the uncle of Thomas Babington Macaulay and brother of the abolitionist Zachary Macaulay.
£250
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MACDIARMID, Hugh.
Stony Limits and Scots Unbound and other Poems ...
Edinburgh, Castle Wynd Printers, [1956].
First edition thus, including some poems that were excluded from the original edition of Stony Limits (1932) over libel fears, and the title-poem only of Scots Unbound (1934), correcting the printers’ errors from the first edition. Bridson had reviewed the first edition of Stony Limits...
£100
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MACDIARMID, Hugh.
A Lap of Honour.
[London,] MacGibbon & Kee, [1967].
First edition, published to coincide with MacDiarmid’s seventy-fifth birthday.
£40
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MACDIARMID, Hugh.
Three Hymns to Lenin …
Edinburgh, Castle Wynd Printers, [1957].
First collected edition, inscribed ‘With love and best wishes to my friend Geoffrey Bridson from Hugh MacDiarmid 17/3/63’. The poems published here had originally appeared separately between 1930 and 1955.
£200
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[MACDIARMID, Hugh.]
WESTON, John C. MacDiarmid’s A Drunk Man looks at the Thistle.
Preston, Akros Publications, 1970.
First edition, inscribed ‘To Joyce and Geoffrey Bridson with warmest regards from Valda and Hugh MacDiarmid’.
£100
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[MACDIARMID, Hugh.]
WESTON, John C. Hugh MacDiarmid’s A Drunk Man looks at the Thistle.
Preston, Akros Publications, 1970.
First edition, inscribed ‘To Joyce and Geoffrey Bridson with love from Hugh MacDiarmid 15/12/70’.
£100
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MACDIARMID, Hugh.
Poems to Paintings by William Johnstone 1933 …
Edinburgh, K.D. Duval, [1963].
First edition.
£25
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MACDIARMID, Hugh.
Direadh I, II and III …
[Stamperia Valdonega for] Frenich, Foss, Kulgin Duval & Colin H. Hamilton, 1974.
First edition, no. 29 of 200 signed copies on Magnani paper.
£175
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MACDIARMID, Hugh [i.e. Christopher GRIEVE], and Valda TREVLYN GRIEVE.
Three Christmas cards, signed from Christopher...
undated.
Three Christmas cards to Douglas Geoffrey Bridson, BBC radio producer and long-time friend of MacDiarmid, and his wife Joyce. The two cards signed from both Christopher and Valda (but in her hand) carry generic messages, the third evidently sent after Christopher’s death, laments ‘I don’t...
£100
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[MACDONNEL, David Evans.]
A Dictionary of Quotations, in most frequent use. Taken from the Greek, Latin, French, Spanish, and Italian...
London, G. G. and J. Robinson, 1797.
First edition, rare, of the first English dictionary of quotations, drawn principally from Latin authors, with some quotations from living languages (mainly French) and some phrases from the law. The dictionary was compiled over some years by ‘look[ing] into every publication political or miscellaneous’...
£650
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MACFARLANE, Patrick.
A new and copious English and Gaelic Vocabulary, with the different Parts of Speech; in alphabetical Order....
Edinburgh: Printed [by R. Menzies] for the Author, and Sold by A. Constable and Co. Edinburgh. 1815.
First edition of this early English-Gaelic dictionary. The English-Gaelic Vocabulary was published alone, as here, at 5s.6d., or together with the Gaelic-English part at 12s.6d. The Gaelic scholar complied it because the ‘want of an English and Gaelic Vocabulary has long been a desideratum...
£175
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[MACKENZIE, Lieutenant-Colonel George, and others, defendants.]
The Trial, before the High Court of Justiciary in Scotland, at...
Aberdeen: Printed by J. Burnett ... for C. and J. Robinson, London [and stationers in Edinburgh, Aberdeen, Banff, Elgin, and Inverness], 1803.
Sole edition. This controversial trial was brought as a private prosecution after the Lord Advocate, Charles Hope, had decided not to prosecute any officers or soldiers for killing four peaceable inhabitants of Aberdeen after celebrations of the King’s birthday on 4 June 1802 had got out of control....
£150
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MACLEISH, Archibald.
This Music Crept by me upon the Waters.
Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1953.
First trade edition, inscribed ‘To Geoffrey Bridson through whom alone it happened / with admiration Archibald MacLeish’.
£250
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MACLEISH, Archibald.
Conquistador.
Boston and New York, Houghton Mifflin, 1932.
First edition, signed ‘Archibald MacLeish / Conway, Mass’. This long poem won MacLeish his first of three Pulitzer prizes.
£300
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MACNEICE, Louis.
Christopher Columbus, a radio play …
[London,] Faber & Faber, [1944].
First edition of MacNiece’s early radio play, first broadcast on 12 October 1942 to mark the 450th anniversary of the ‘discovery’ of America, with the role of Columbus played by Laurence Olivier.
£300
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MACNEICE, Louis.
Out of the Picture. A Play in two Acts.
London, Faber and Faber Limited, [1946].
First edition, third impression.
£25
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MADDEN, Dodgson Hamilton.
The Diary of Master William Silence: A Study of Shakespeare & of Elizabethan Sport.
London, New York, & Bombay, Longmans, Green, & Co., 1897.
First edition of Madden’s reimagination of Elizabethan sport, derived from passages from Shakespeare. Though a legal writer and prominent jurist, being appointed attorney-general of Ireland in 1889, the best known publication of Dodgson Hamilton Madden (1840–1928) remains the Diary of Master...
£120
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[MAGRATH, Cornelius.]
‘Ein Irländer Riss …’
Nuremberg, 1756.
A delightful promotional image for the Continental tour of ‘The Irish Giant’ Cornelius Magrath (1736/7–1760), ‘To be seen in Nuremberg in the month of July 1756’.
£3000