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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DRYDEN, John.
Religio Laici or a Layman’s Faith. A Poem …
London, Printed for Jacob Tonson … 1683.
First edition, second issue (with a few minor corrections; Macdonald located only two copies of the first): ‘a defence of the Anglican position, which shows his singular power of arguing in verse’ (Leslie Stephen, DNB). The inspiration for the poem was the translation of Richard Simon’s Histoire...
£400
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[DRYDEN, John.]
The Medall. A Satyre against Sedition. By the Authour of Absalom and Achitophel …
London, Printed for Jacob Tonson … 1682.
First edition, second issue, adding two Latin lines at the end. The subject of Dryden’s satire was the medal struck to celebrate Shaftesbury’s acquittal from charges of high treason. According to Spence, Charles II gave Dryden ‘the hint for writing his poem’, and rewarded him for it. In...
£750
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DRYDEN, John.
Eleonora: a Panegyrical Poem: dedicated to the Memory of the late Countess of Abingdon …
London, Printed for Jacob Tonson … 1692.
First edition of Dryden’s eulogy for Eleanora, late Countess of Abingdon, commissioned by her husband, the first Earl of Abingdon.
£275
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[DUPONT DE NEMOURS, Pierre-Samuel, and Konrad Engelbert OELSNER.]
Notice sur la vie et les écrits de M. Joël Barlow, Ministre...
[Paris,] Smith [for the authors], 1813.
First edition, one of 500 copies, of this eulogy to the poet and diplomat Joel Barlow – a friend of Jefferson, Madison, Blake, and Paine – an association copy gifted by his widow, Ruth Barlow (née Baldwin) to the physicist and inventor Sir Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford, with her manuscript...
£500
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D’URFEY, Thomas.
The Progress of Honesty: or, a View of a Court and City. A Pindarique Poem …
London: Printed for Joseph Hindmarsh … 1681.
First edition of an allegorical poem inspired, like Dryden’s Absalom and Achitophel, by the Exclusion Crisis of 1681. ‘Honesty’ describes to ‘Error’, ‘Faction’ and ‘Beauty’ the court of Charles II (‘Titus the Second … the joy of human kind’), and the malign effects of Treason...
£300
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[D’URFEY, Thomas].
Butler’s Ghost: or Hudibras. The Fourth Part. With Reflections upon these Times …
London, Printed for Joseph Hindmarsh … 1682.
First edition of D’Urfey’s sequel to Samuel Butler’s burlesque poem Hudibras, the most celebrated satire of the seventeenth century, published in three parts in 1663-78. Written in hudibrastic metre, the two cantos of Butler’s Ghost follow the progress of Butler’s eponymous hero from an interrupted...
£325
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DURRELL, Lawrence.
Collected Poems.
London, Faber and Faber, [1960].
First edition, inscribed ‘For Geoff from Larry Durrell 1962 / “too much tape [?]” Eliot’.
£400
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DUTENS, Louis.
An Inquiry into the Origin of the Discoveries attributed to the Moderns: wherein it is demonstrated, that our most...
London: Printed for W. Griffin … 1769.
First edition in English of Recherches sur l’origine des découvertes attribuées aux modernes (Paris, 1766), an illuminating and voluminous study of how ‘in almost all truths of the greatest importance, the ancients preceded the moderns; or at least pointed out, or prepared the way, for their...
£300
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DYMENT, Clifford.
Poems 1935–1948.
London, J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd, [1949].
First edition, inscribed ‘For Geoffrey and Joyce, with best wishes plus, from Clifford Dyment and Marcella. October 1950’.
£200
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ECHARD, Laurence.
A general Ecclesiastical History from the Nativity of our Blessed Saviour to the first Establishment of Christianity...
London, W. Bowyer for Jacob Tonson, 1702.
First edition of Echard’s compendious history of the early Church, dedicated to Queen Anne. The work offers a concise and authoritative account compiled from a broad selection of authors, the preface noting: ‘that my Book might want nothing that cou’d be procur’d from others … I have...
£250
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ELIOT, George.
The Writings …
Boston and New York, Houghton Mifflin and Company, 1908.
The Large-Paper edition of Eliot’s complete works, no. 184 of 750 sets.
£2500
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ELLIOTT, Mary [née Belson].
Simple Truths, in Verse; for the Amusement and Instruction of Children at an early Age …
London: William Darton, sold also by Harvey and Darton … and John Harris … [c. 1825].
‘Fourth edition, corrected and revised’. Elliott was an extremely prolific author for Darton. These poems are settings of Anna Letitia Barbauld’s Hymns in Prose for Children (1791).
£200
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[ENGELBRECHT, Martin.]
[Vier Jahreszeiten. Serie 89.]
[Augsburg, Martin Engelbrecht, c. 1750.]
An attractive hand-coloured engraved peepshow showing the four seasons, with summer in the foreground retreating into winter behind, lined with printed waste from an illustrated Dutch religious broadside.
£1750
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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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ETHEREGE, George.
The comical Revenge, or Love in a Tub. Acted at his Highness the Duke of York’s Theatre in Lincolns-Inn-Fields ...
London, Printed for Henry Herringman ... 1669.
Fourth edition of Etherege’s first play, preceded by two editions of 1664 and one of 1667; this is the scarcer of two printings for Herringman in 1669, with ‘fields’ rather than ‘Fields’ in the title, and the catchword ‘hope’ not ‘the’ on A2r.
£500
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EUSEBIUS CAESARIENSIS; RUFINUS AQUILEIENSIS, translator.
Historia ecclesiastica.
Rome, Johannes Philippus de Lignamine, 15 May 1476.
The Syston Park copy of the earliest history of the Christian Church, written in the early fourth century; this is probably the third edition. It was translated into Latin in the early fifth century by Rufinus of Aquileia, who extended the text down to the time of Theodosius at the end of the...
£4500
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EYRE, Henry.
A brief account of the Holt waters, containing one hundred and twelve eminent cures, perform’d by the use of the...
London, printed for J. Roberts, 1731.
First edition. The waters from Bath, Bristol and Holt, in Wiltshire, were the most popular English mineral waters of the eighteenth century, in no small part due to the activity of Henry Eyre, ‘Sworn Purveyor to Her Majesty [Queen Caroline, wife of George II] for all Mineral Waters’. Eyre ran a distribution...
£450
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FAGNANI, Giovanni Marco.
De bello Arriano libri sex.
Milan, heirs of Pacifico da Ponte and Giovanni Battista Piccaglia, 1604.
First and only edition of the sole published work by the Italian nobleman Giovanni Marco Fagnani (1524–1609), an epic poem recounting Ambrose of Milan’s campaign against local Arians in late fourth-century Lombardy.
£900
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FARIS, Ahmad.
Abdaʻ ma-kan fi suwar Salitan Al ʻUthman … Album des souverains Ottomans édité par Selim Faris Effendy directeur...
Leipzig, Carl Garte, [c. 1885].
A handsome set of portraits of thirty-four Ottoman Sultans from Osman I, founder of the Ottoman Empire, to Abdul Hamid II, who reigned from 1876 to 1909, this copy annotated with notes in Arabic.
£3500
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FAULKNER, William.
Requiem for a Nun.
New York, Random House, 1951.
Limited edition, no. 248 of 750 copies signed by Faulkner. His first publication after winning the Nobel Prize, Requiem for a Nun employs a partly dramatic form to take up the story of Temple Drake from his earlier novel Sanctuary.
£1000