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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[POETRY.]
‘Trattato della [poesia Toscana]’.
[Asti?, 1780-1782.]
A manuscript treatise on the method of composing poetry in Italian, with numerous examples from renowned authors and eight apparently unpublished poems about horse-racing, with references to Arabian, Sardinian, English, and African horses, as well as to a firework display.
£750
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[POETRY.]
‘Récueil de differentes pieces de vers, et chansons. A l’usage de Madame la Comtesse de Lichtervelde née Comtesse...
[Belgium, 1777 and later].
An interesting commonplace of verses, songs, madrigals, epigrams, carols, and fables, many of which are apparently unpublished, compiled for the use of Albertine de Cassina (1749–1816), Comtesse de Wonsheim, who married Charles de Lichtervelde (1741–1803) in 1769.
£750
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[POPE, Alexander].
The New Dunciad: as it was Found in the Year 1741. With the Illustrations of Scriblerus, and Notes Variorum.
London: Printed for T. Cooper ... 1742.
First edition. This is the first printing of Book IV of the Dunciad. Having carried satire to the brink of prosecution, Pope retired into four years of silence, broken in 1742. A reference to Colley Cibber in line 316 inaugurated Pope’s last literary quarrel, and led to the revision of the...
£750
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POPE, Alexander.
Of false Taste. An Epistle to the right honourable Richard Earl of Burlington. Occasion’d by his publishing...
London: Printed for L. Gilliver … 1731 [1732].
1. Third edition of Of false Taste, published on 15 January 1732, adding Pope’s long letter to Burlington in reply to ‘the clamour rais’d about this epistle’. This is the first of three issues, with the misprint ‘Cielings’ on p. 11. Griffith 267; Foxon P912.
£850
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POPE, Alexander.
The Works … Vol. I [–VI]. With explanatory Notes and Additions never before printed.
London, Printed for B. Lintot, 1736 [Vol. II. Printed for L. Gilliver 1735; Vol. III. Printed for H. Lintot, 1736; Vol. IV. Printed...
A fine set of the bibliographically complicated small octavo Works, including the scarce supplementary Vol II. Part II.
£1750
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POPE, Alexander.
Windsor-Forest. To the Right Honourable George Lord Lansdown …
London: Printed for Bernard Lintott … 1713.
First edition of Pope’s second separately published poem, preceded by An Essay on Criticism in 1711. Written in the tradition that young poets begin with pastoral verse, Windsor-Forest, with its epigraph from Virgil’s Eclogues, was the poem that first won Swift’s regard and...
£2750
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POPE, Alexander.
The Dunciad. With Notes variorum, and the Prologomena of Scriblerus. The second Edition, with some Additional Notes.
London: Printed for Lawton Gilliver … 1729.
‘Second’ octavo edition, revised. This is Griffith’s variant d, with an extra unpaginated leaf of terminal errata (printed on the same half-sheet as the cancel P3).
£450
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POPE, Alexander.
The Poetical Works of Alexander Pope, with his last Corrections, Additions, and Improvements, in four Volumes,...
London, ‘printed under the direction of J. Bell, British Library, Strand, bookseller to His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales,’ 1787...
A good set of Pope’s works, printed for inclusion in Bell’s The Poets of Great Britain. Initially imported from Edinburgh and issued with new titles, Bell’s Poets of Great Britain was intended to provide attractive and portable works of British poets ‘from Chaucer to Churchill’,...
£175
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POPE, Alexander.
The Temple of Fame: a Vision … London: Printed for Bernard Lintot … 1715.
London: Printed for Bernard Lintot … 1715.
First edition. A modernized version of Chaucer’s Hous of Fame, for which Lintot paid Pope £32 5s. Perhaps Lintot was hoping to arouse interest in the rather expensive new edition of Chaucer which is advertised here at 30 s. in sheets. Queen Anne’s licence to Urry is dated 20 July 1714, and the Proposals...
£350
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POPE, Alexander.
Letters of Mr Alexander Pope, and several of his Friends.
London: Printed by J. Wright for J. Knapton … L. Gilliver … J. Brindley … and R. Dodsley … 1737.
First folio edition, large paper issue, preceded by a subscribers’ edition in quarto, of the first ‘official’ version of Pope’s letters.
£1500
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[POPE, Walter.]
The Memoires of Monsieur Du Vall: containing the history of his Life and Death. Whereunto are annexed his last...
London, Printed for Henry Brome … 1670.
First(?) edition of a partly fictitious and often satirical life of the highwayman Claude Duval, published shortly after his execution in 1670. This is the more substantial of two opportunistic biographies, between them the main sources of information about him, though by no means entirely trustworthy. ...
£750
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PORTER, Anna Maria.
The Village of Mariendorpt. A Tale … in four Volumes …
London: Printed for Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme and Brown … 1821
First edition of a rather melodramatic novel set in Bavaria towards the end of the Thirty Years War. It proved just what Longman was looking for, and a sequel, Roche-Blanche, followed in 1822.
£1200
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PORTER, Jane.
Duke Christian of Luneburg; or, Tradition from the Hartz … in three Volumes …
London: Printed for Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green … 1824.
First edition. One of the earliest exponents of the historical novel, Porter enjoyed enormous popularity during her lifetime. Duke Christian of Luneburg was her sixth book, which she modestly described as ‘a little traditionary [sic] sketch of an illustrious hero’. Set in sixteenth-century...
£650
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PORTER, Jane and Anna Maria.
Coming out; and the Field of Forty Footsteps … In three Volumes …
London: Printed for Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green … 1828.
First edition; the first two volumes comprise ‘Coming Out; a Tale of the nineteenth century’ by Anna Maria Porter, the final volume is her sister’s ‘Field of Forty Footsteps; a Tale of the seventeenth century’. ‘Either would have made a three-decker all by itself’ (Wolff).
£650
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POSTEL, Guillaume, and Anthonius THYSIUS.
De Republica, seu magistratibus Atheniensium liber … Accessit Antonii Thysii IC. Discursus...
Leiden, Jean Maire, 1645.
An uncommon Leiden edition of Postel’s study of the Athenian magistracy, first published 1541 and revised and enlarged in 1551. Jean Ballesdens edited an edition for Maire in 1635; this 1645 edition added an essay on the same topic by the librarian and historian Anthony Thysius the Younger (1603–1665),...
£200
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[POUND.]
Ezra Pound at Seventy.
[New York, New Directions, 1955.]
A small celebratory booklet printing tributes by Auden, Cummings, Eliot, Hemingway (‘Will gladly pay tribute to Ezra but what I would like to do is get him the hell out of St. Elizabeth’s’), Archibald Macleish, Jose de Pina Martins, Marianne Moore, Norman Pearson, Spender, and Edith Sitwell.
£30
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POUND, Ezra.
The Letters … 1907-1941. Edited by D. D. Paige
… London, Faber & Faber, [1951].
First English edition, an association copy.
£150
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POUND, Ezra.
The Classic Anthology defined by Confucius.
London, Faber & Faber, 1955.
First English edition, first printing, comprising sheets of the Harvard University Press edition (1954) with a cancel Faber title-page.
£175
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POUND, Ezra.
Quia Pauper amavi.
London, The Egoist Ltd, [1919].
First edition, one of 500 ordinary copies (there were also 100 signed copies on handmade paper’, inscribed ‘Bridson’s copy / 11 Ap ’59 / Ezra Pound’. This work contained the first English publication of Cantos I–III, not printed in that order.
£1750