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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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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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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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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PYNCHON, Thomas.
Gravity’s Rainbow.
New York, The Viking Press, [1973].
First edition of Pynchon’s magnum opus, ‘literally indescribable, a tortured cadenza of lurid imaginings and total recall that goes on longer than you can quite believe’ (Michael Wood).
£900
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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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REXROTH, Kenneth.
An Autobiographical Novel …
Garden City, NY, Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1966.
First edition, inscribed ‘In friendship / for Geoffrey Bridson / Kenneth Rexroth SF June 66’.
£300
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ROTH, Henry.
Call it Sleep.
London, Michael Joseph, 1963.
First UK edition of Roth’s precocious masterpiece, generally regarded as the finest novel of Jewish immigration to America before and after the turn of the century.
£250
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[SASSOON, Siegfried.] SURTEES, [Robert Smith]; Lionel GOUGH, editor.
Hunting Scenes from Surtees.
London, Rupert Hart-Davis, 1953.
Sassoon’s proof copy of Hunting Scenes from Surtees, with pages left blank for the inclusion of his as-yet unwritten introduction.
£850
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SAY, Jean-Baptiste.
Olbie, ou Essai sur les moyens de réformer les moeurs d’une nation.
Paris, Deterville and Treuttel & Wurtz, ‘an VIII de la République’ [1799–1800].
Rare first edition of Say’s utopia, our copy presented to a politician from Calvados, written in response to a competition organised by the Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques on the question: ‘Which institutions are capable of establishing morality among a people?’. Say treats...
£2500
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[SCOTT, Walter, Sir.]
Ivanhoe; A Romance. By “The Author of Waverley,” &c. … In three Volumes … Second Edition.
Edinburgh, [James Ballantyne & Co.] for Archibald Constable & Co., and London, Hurst, Robinson, & Co., 1820.
Stated second edition but in fact a third issue of the first, published on 15 January; the first issue, published on 20 December the previous year, is similarly dated 1820.
£375
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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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[SURTEES, Robert Smith,] and John LEECH (illustrator).
Handley Cross series.
London, Bradbury, Agnew, & Co., 1899-1900.
Limited ‘Master of Foxhounds’ edition, finely printed at the Whitefriars Press. Having published the first editions of several of Surtees’s sporting novels, Bradbury, Agnew, & Co. gathered and reprinted the six most successful as the ‘Handley Cross series’ as luxury sets. Publisher’s...
£1200
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SWIFT, Jonathan.
The Works of J. S, D. D, D. S. P. D. in four Volumes … In this Edition are great Alterations and Additions;...
Dublin: Printed by and for George Faulkner, Printer and Bookseller … 1735.
First 12mo. edition of the first collected Works of Swift, preceded by octavo edition earlier in the year. Here the chronological arrangement in volumes I and II has been altered and one piece, ‘Prometheus’ (a later insertion), moved from volume IV to its correct place in volume II.
£1250
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TEMPLE, Sir William.
An Introduction to the History of England …
London, Printed for Richard Simpson … and Ralph Simpson … 1695
First edition. Newly arrived in England from Trinity College, Dublin, Swift in 1689 entered upon a ten-year period as secretary to Sir William Temple at Moor Park near Farnham in Surrey. ‘Partly thanks to Swift’s support several of Temple’s important works were published in the 1690s, notably the...
£450
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THACKERAY, William Makepeace.
The Virginians, a tale of the last century.
London, Bradbury & Evans, November 1857 [– October 1859].
First edition in the original monthly parts of Thackeray’s American sequel to Henry Esmond.
£600
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THOMAS, Dylan, and Sir Peter Blake, illustrator.
Under Milk Wood: A Play for Voices.
London: Apple Litho (Bristol) Ltd. for Enitharmon Editions and Queen Anne Press, 2013.
De Luxe edition, number 61 of 100 copies with a signed print by Blake. This finely-produced edition was published to mark the centenary of Dylan Thomas’s birth and celebrates the culmination of over twenty-five years of work by Peter Blake, one of the founding fathers of British Pop Art. The...
£975
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[TOMKIS, Thomas.]
Lingua: or, the Combat of the Tongue, and the five Senses for Superiority. A pleasant Comoedie.
London, Nicholas Okes for Simon Waterson, 1617.
Third edition, rare, of this allegorical Cambridge play, perhaps the earliest academic drama to achieve popular success.
£3000
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VERTAMONT, Abbé de, attributed.
L’Ombre du feu Cardinal: or, Cardinal Fleury’s Ghost. Translated from the original...
Milles … and the Booksellers of London and Westminster. 1743.
First edition, ostensibly translated from a manuscript rescued by an Officer of the Guards at the Bastille, but in fact an original English thrust at French foreign policy following the death of Cardinal André-Hercule de Fleury, the able chief minister of Louis XV and political ally of Sir Robert...
£350