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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POUND, Ezra.
The Literary Essays … Edited with an Introduction by T. S.
Eliot. London, Faber & Faber, [1954].
First edition, first impression.
£75
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[POUND, Ezra.]
Agenda. Twenty-first Anniversary Ezra Pound Special Issue.
London, Agenda Editions, 1980.
Reprinting a number of works by Pound alongside criticism. Bridson’s article ‘Italian Painting in the Cantos’, one of his last publications, appears on pp. 210-217.
£75
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POUND, Ezra.
Cantos 110–116 …
printed & published by the Fuck You / press at a secret location in the lower east side, New York City, USA, 1967.
Unauthorised edition (unsurprisingly), no. 261 of 300 copies. The contents are extracts and include a number of apparently unidentified lines; this piracy forced the publication of Drafts and Fragment of Cantos CX–CXVII (1969).
£150
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POUND, Ezra.
Gaudier-Brzeska, a Memoir …
[London,] The Marvell Press, [1960].
Revised edition, inscribed by Dorothy Pound on behalf of her husband to ‘J[oyce] + G[eoffrey] Bridson. DP for EP / Sept 1961. Brunnenburg’.
£250
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POUND, Ezra, and Ernest FENELLOSA.
Introduzione ai Nô, con un drama in un atto di Motokiyo: Kagekiyo.
Milan, All’insegna del pesce d’oro [Scheiwiller], [1958].
Third edition, translations of Pound’s ‘Introduction’ and one play from Certain Noble Plays of Japan by his daughter Mary de Rachewiltz. This third edition added ‘Un intervallo di 40 anni’ by Pound, dated November 1958.
£30
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POUND, Ezra, and D.G. BRIDSON.
‘An Interview with Ezra Pound’ in New Directions 17. Norfolk, Conn.,
New Directions, [1961].
First edition, printing the majority of the interviews recorded in 1956 and broadcast in 1959. Other contributors to this issue included Kerouac, Ginsberg, and Williams.
£100
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POUND, Ezra, and Giovanni GIUDICI, translator.
H.S. Mauberley, tradotto di Giovanni Giudici con tre disegni inedita...
Milan, all’insegna del pesce d’oro [Scheiwiller], 1959.
First edition, no. 141 of 1000 copies, a parallel-text Italian translation of Pound’s modernist masterpiece Hugh Selwyn Mauberley (1920).
£100
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POWYS, John Cowper.
A Glastonbury Romance.
London, John Lane The Bodley Head Limited, [1933].
First edition of Powys’s monumental sixth novel. Though we cannot trace a direct link between Powys and Bridson, Bridson certainly knew Powys’s friend James Hanley - they worked together for the BBC during the war. The centrality of the Grail legends to A Glastonbury Romance would...
£175
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PRESENT FOR THE YOUNG (A).
London: Printed for The Religious Tract Society … and sold at their Depository … also by J. Nisbet...
[c. 1827]
First edition. A finely illustrated anthology of religious verse, contemplations, and prayers for children. Pieces include poems on the seasons and stories about a Welsh Shepherd, and ‘The Hill and the Valley’, all with heavily metaphorical content.
£175
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PRIESTLEY, J. B.
Angel Pavement …
London, William Heinemann Ltd, 1930.
First edition, the deluxe issue, no. 308 of 1025 copies signed by the author.
£150
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PRINCE, F[rank].
T[empleton]. Soldiers Bathing and other Poems.
London, The Fortune Press, [1954].
First edition, Prince’s second collection, inscribed ‘with good wishes from the author, F. T. Prince. 23 April, 1954.’
£200
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PRINCE, F[rank].
T[empleton].
Poems. London, Faber and Faber Limited, [1938].
First edition of the first collection by the South African-born Prince. Prince had contributed several poems to Eliot’s Criterion in the mid-30s.
£180
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PRIOR, Matthew.
Poems on several Occasions.
London: Printed for Jacob Tonson … 1709.
First authorised edition, preceded by Curll’s pirated collection of 1707. In the preface Prior complains that in Curll’s edition poems by other authors have been misattributed to him and that some of his own poems are ‘transcribed … so imperfectly, that I hardly knew them to be mine’....
£400
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PYNCHON, Thomas.
Gravity’s Rainbow.
New York: The Viking Press, [1973].
First edition. ‘Gravity’s Rainbow is literally indescribable, a tortured cadenza of lurid imaginings and total recall that goes on longer than you can quite believe’, wrote critic Michael Wood on first publication of this, Pynchon’s magnum opus:
£900
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RACHEWILTZ, Boris de.
L’Elemento magico in Ezra Pound.
Milan, All’insegna del pesce d’oro [Scheiwiller], 1965.
First edition, no. 182 of 1000 copies, an essay by Pound’s son-in-law published on the occasion of Pound’s eightieth birthday.
£150
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RADCLIFFE, Ann.
The Mysteries of Udolpho, a Romance; interspersed with some Pieces of Poetry ... in four Volumes ...
London: Printed for G. G. and J. Robinson ... 1794.
First edition of a cornerstone of gothic fiction, ‘a book so rich in Gothic ideas and techniques that its far-reaching influence can scarcely be overstated … Its wild and lush landscapes became ubiquitous too, in the imagination of contemporaries, and it is no surprise to find Keats, in 1818, writing...
£3500
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RAWLET, John.
Poetick Miscellanies …
London, printed for Samuel Tidmarsh, 1687.
First edition. Writing from the isolation of Newcastle, then a rural parish in fell country, Rawlet developed a mode of religious and descriptive poetry distinctly out of step with his own age, as is acknowledged by the editor in a verse preface: ‘Reader, expect not here, the filth of th’...
£1100
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REEVE, Clara.
The Memoirs of Sir Roger de Clarendon, the natural son of Edward Prince of Wales, commonly called the Black Prince;...
London: Printed for Hookham and Carpenter … 1793.
First edition. After several novels with contemporary settings, Reeve returned here to the past, though it is less gothic than her Old English Baron. The historical setting is a foil for a commentary on contemporary post-Revolutionary French politics. Reeve had been an initial support of...
£2750
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REEVE, Clara.
The Exiles; or Memoirs of the Count de Cronstadt …
London: Printed for T. Hookham … 1788.
First edition, a gothic romance by the author of The Old English Baron (1777).
£2400
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REMARKS ON FOG’S JOURNAL,
of February 10. 1752/3. Exciting the People to an Assassination.
London: Printed for J. Wilford …1733
First edition. In order to reduce the burden of the land tax on the country gentlemen upon whom his ministry depended, and to shift government revenues to other sources, Walpole revived the excise on salt and was considering substituting excise for customs duties on wine and tobacco. This led to alarms...
£150