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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SILIUS ITALICUS, C.; John CAREY, editor.
Punicorum libri XVII, sedulâ recensione accurati [cover: Recensuit et...
London, T. Davison for Rodwell & Martin, J. Booker, Baldwin, Cradock, & Joy, G. & W. Whittaker, Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, & Co., T. Cadell,...
First and only ‘Regent’s Classics’ edition of Silius Italicus’s epic poem on the Second Punic War, an attractive copy, uncut in the publisher’s printed boards.
£100
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SIMEONI, Gabriele.
Comentarii di Gabriello Symeoni Fiorentino sopra alla tetrarchia di Vinegia, di Milano, di Mantova, et di Ferrara ...
Venice, Comino da Trino di Monferrato, 1546.
Scarce first edition of Gabriele Simeoni’s (1509–1575) political history of the most powerful city-states of sixteenth-century Italy – Venice, Milan, Mantua, and Ferrara – with full-page genealogical diagrams of the Visconti, Gonzaga, and d’Este families.
£550
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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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SMITH, Arthur Henderson.
Chinese characteristics …
Shanghai, printed and published at the “North-China Herald” office, 1890.
First edition of this important and influential work on China by the American missionary Arthur Henderson Smith (1845–1932), for many decades the most widely read American book on the Chinese.
£550
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SMITH, William.
The Speeches of Mr. Smith, of South Carolina, delivered in the House of Representatives of the United States, in...
Philadelphia printed, London reprinted for John Stockdale, 1794.
First London edition, a rebuff to the punitive anti-British tariffs proposed by the future President James Madison, first printed in Philadelphia in the same year and also reprinted in Edinburgh.
£175
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[SMOLLETT, Tobias].
The Adventures of Roderick Random … in two Volumes … The second Edition.
London: Printed for J. Osborn … 1748.
Second edition, with ‘major imaginative changes’, and frontispieces which appear here for the first time. Even though there were only a few weeks between the first and second editions, Smollett found time to make a number of significant corrections in the text, on average about one substantive change...
£500
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SMOLLETT, Tobias.
The Expedition of Humphry Clinker … The second Edition …
London, Printed for W. Johnston … and B. Collins … 1771.
Second edition of Smollett’s acknowledged masterpiece, printed in the same year as the first. The story describes, in epistolary form, the journey of the Matthew Bramble, a hypochondriac Scot, and his family round Britain in search of a cure for his various ailments. The titular Humphry Clinker...
£275
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SOPHOCLES.
‘Αι του Σοφοκλεους τραγωδιαι ‘επτα. Sophoclis Tragoediae septem: nova versione donatae...
Eton, Joseph Pote; and sold by C. Bathurst et al, London, 1775.
An attractive Eton-printed edition of Thomas Johnson’s Sophocles. Johnson (d. 1746), was educated at Eton, gaining a scholarship to King’s Cambridge in 1683, and returning to the school as assistant master in 1705, the same year he published his editions of Sophocles’ Ajax and Electra...
£400
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SOPHOCLES; Adrien TURNÈBE, editor.
Τραγωδιαι. Αιαξ μαστιγοφορος. Ηλεκτρα. Οιδιπους...
Paris, Adrien Turnèbe, 1553 [(colophon:) 24 December 1552].
A wide-margined copy of Sophocles in Greek owned by the Vatican librarian and Greek scholar Leone Allacci, with his name on the title-page. Sophocles’ seven tragedies narrate the stories of the Greek heroes and heroines Ajax, Heracles and Deianeira, Oedipus and Jocasta, Philoctetes, Antigone,...
£1850
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SOPHOCLES; Ezra POUND, translator.
Women of Trachis. A Version by Ezra Pound.
London, Neville Spearman, [1956].
First edition of Pound’s version of Sophocles’ Trachiniae, inscribed by the editor Denis Goacher to Geoffrey Bridson (1910–1980), who had co-produced the play for BBC radio in April 1954.
£1000
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SOUTHEY, Robert.
The Lay of the Laureate. Carmen Nuptiale …
London: Printed for Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown … 1816.
First trade edition of Southey’s laureate ode on the occasion of the marriage of Princess Charlotte to Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, dedicated to her. There was also a private edition in octavo on large paper. Tinker 1962.
£200
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SPENSER, Edmund.
The Works of Edmund Spenser.
Oxford, The Shakespeare Head Press, 1930 [– 1932].
Limited edition, numbered 123 of 375 copies, of the handsome Shakespeare Head Spenser, one of the most significant works of the press.
£1250
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SPRAT, Thomas.
Observations on Monsieur de Sorbier’s Voyage into England. Written to Dr. Wren ...
London, Printed for John Martyn, and James Allestry, Printers to the Royal Society. 1665.
First edition. When Samuel de Sorbière published his polemical Relation d’un Voyage en Angleterre (1664), touching on defects in the English nation and character, Thomas Sprat, afterwards Bishop of Rochester, composed an angry reply in the form of a letter to Christopher Wren (both were stalwarts...
£850
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STILLINGFLEET, Edward.
Sermons preached on several Occasions to which a Discourse is annexed concerning the true Reason of the...
London, Printed by Robert White, for Henry Mortlock … 1673.
First edition thus, comprising twelve sermons preached 1666-72 and ‘A Discourse concerning the Suffering of Christ’ (pp. 239-384); six of the sermons and the ‘Discourse’ were first published in 1669.
£200
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[STRASBOURG.]
Souscription patriotique de la part du beau-sexe de Strasbourg.
[S.l., s.n., 1789?.]
Rare first edition of this entertaining satirical piece on women's clothing, published in the aftermath of the French Revolution. After complaining that the recent craze for ‘gauze, muslin, linen and feathers’ had brought the country to its knees, the text describes how the patriotic women...
£165
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STRYPE, John.
The Life of the learned Sir John Cheke, Kt., first Instructer, afterwards Secretary of State, to King Edward VI.,...
London, John Wyat, 1705.
First edition of Strype’s biography of the courtier and classicist Sir John Cheke, inaugural Regius Professor of Greek at Cambridge.
£450
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SUETONIUS Tranquillus, Gaius, and HERODIAN OF ANTIOCH.
Vita di duodeci imperatori… nuovamente tradotta in volgare. Historia...
Venice, Venturino di Rossinelli [for Curzio Navò], 1539.
Annotated copy of a scarce edition of this early Italian translation of Suetonius and Herodianus, two works of ancient history which explore the lives and deeds of Roman emperors from Julius Caesar to Domitian, and from Commodus to the Year of the Six Emperors in 238. The translator of this vernacular...
£1250
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SUETONIUS TRANQUILLUS, Caius.
[De XII Caesarum vitis. De Illustribus grammaticis. De Claris rhetoribus. Horatii vita. Plinii vita....
Paris, Typographia Regia, 1644.
An attractive, illustrated pocket Suetonius. Quoting the pioneering early eighteenth-century bookseller Guillaume de Bure, Cookman notes that this edition is ‘recherché a cause de la beauté de son impression’.
£350
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SULLIVAN, J.P., editor.
Ezra Pound, a critical Anthology.
[London, Penguin, 1970.]
First edition.
£30