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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AINSWORTH, William Harrison.
The Combat of the Thirty. From a Breton Lay of the fourteenth Century. With an Introduction, comprising...
London: Chapman and Hall … 1859
First edition of the first English translations of these two texts, inscribed to ‘James Crossley from his old friend William Harrison Ainsworth’. The two men had been friends since 1817 when Crossley, a solicitor, was articled to Ainsworth’s father and later became a partner in the firm. He was...
£550
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ALMEIDA, Theodoro de.
Lisboa destruida poema, author o P. Theodoro de Almeida, da Congregaçaõ do Oratorio de Lisboa.
Lisbon, Antonio Rodrigues Galhardo, 1803.
First edition of this poem in six cantos, with extensive notes, on the disastrous 1755 Lisbon earthquake, by the Oratorian priest and philosopher Almeida (1722-1804). One of the deadliest in history, the earthquake almost totally destroyed the Portuguese capital and accentuated political tensions within...
£300
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[AUGUSTINE, Saint, attributed author.]
The Meditations of Saint Augustine, from the Latin Original. By the Rev. J. Martin,...
Dublin: Printed for the Author, by H. Fitzpatrick … 1798.
First edition of this rare translation of the pseudo-Augustinian Meditationum Liber, an eleventh-century devotional text very popular in the Middle Ages.
£1250
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BALDI, Bernardino, da Urbino.
La Difesa di Procopio contro le calunnie di Flavio Biondo, con alcune considerationi intorno al...
Urbino, Marc’Antonio Mazzantini, 1627.
First and only edition, very rare, of this impassioned critique of Flavio Biondo’s interpretation of Procopius, by the poet, polyglot, historian, and mathematician Bernardino Baldi, Abbot of Guastalla.
£450
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BARDUZZI, Bernardino.
A Letter in Praise of Verona [1489]. In the original Latin Text with an English Translation by Betty Radice.
Verona, [Officina Bodoni,] 1974.
First edition, No. 34 of 150 copies: an elegant facsimile reprint of one of Verona’s rarest incunables. Barduzzi’s eulogistic letter to Giovanni Nesi was first printed in 1489 by Paulus Fridenperger. The Latin text is followed here by an English translation and a biographical postscript by Giovanni...
£375
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BAUR, Fidelis.
Geschichte der Hohenzollernschen Staaten Hechingen und Sigmaringen von den ältesten Zeiten bis auf unsere Tage,...
Sigmaringen, Bucher & Liener, 1834-6.
First edition. Perched on the Zollenberg, just south of Hechingen, is the castle of Hohenzollern, which gave its name to the ruling house of Brandenburg–Prussia from 1415 to 1918, arguably the most powerful family in German history. The ancestral lands were divided in 1575 by Count Karl...
£350
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BEARCROFT, Philip.
An historical Account of Thomas Sutton Esq; and of his Foundation in Charter-House …
London: Printed by E. Owen, and sold by F. Gyles … W. Hinchliffe … J. and P. Knapton … J. Stagg … and S. Birt … 1737.
First edition. Thomas Sutton (1532-1611) was an Elizabethan civil servant who made an enormous fortune from leases of land rich in coal in Durham. In 1611 he bought Howard House for £13,000 from the Earl of Suffolk; the building acquired its more familiar name, ‘Charterhouse’, after the order of...
£250
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[BEER, Johann Christoph.]
Kurtzer Entwurff dess Lebens der Könige in Engelland von der Zeit an als die Sachsen und Angeln sich...
Nuremberg, Johann Hoffmann, 1676.
Second, corrected and improved, edition (first 1671) of this attractive German survey of English kings and queens.
£400
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BENTHAM, Jeremy.
Plan of Parliamentary Reform, in the Form of a Catechism, with Reasons for each Article. With an Introduction,...
London: Printed in the Year 1817. Re-printed and Re-published, with Notes and Alterations, by Permission of the Author, by T. J. Wooler … 1818.
First edition thus of an inexpensive reprint of Bentham’s Plan of Parliamentary Reform (1817), the style adapted by Thomas Wooler, with Bentham’s permission, to ‘render it more easy of comprehension to the popular reader’. In this form it first appeared in instalments in Wooler’s radical...
£225
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[BEWICK, Thomas?]
Twenty-six rubbings from engraved woodblocks of the heads of Kings and Queens and England, apparently never published...
[1790-1805?]
Twenty-six apparently unrecorded wood-engravings – heads of the monarchs of England from William the Conqueror to George III – these images taken by rubbing from the blocks rather than printing. The engravings bear strong similarity to the 26 which appear in An Abridgement of the History...
£750
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BLOUNT, Sir Thomas Pope.
Essays on several Subjects …
London, Printed for Richard Bently … 1692.
Second edition of seven essays of ‘considerable merit [that] display the easy scepticism and solid good sense and learning of the author to good advantage’ (Pforzheimer). They deal with self-interest; the mischief of learning; education; respect for antiquity; the virtues of modern men; passion;...
£500
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BOLTON, Robert.
Letters and Tracts on the Choice of Company and other Subjects. The second Edition.
London: Printed for J. Whiston and B. White … and R. and J. Dodsley … 1762.
Second edition; a reissue of the sheets of the first edition with a cancel title-page and advertisement replacing the original title leaf A1. As well as the title tract, the volume includes essays ‘On Intemperance in Eating’, ‘On Intemperance in Drinking’, ‘On Pleasure’ and ‘On Public Worship’,...
£325
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[BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER.]
La Liturgie. C’est a dire, le formulaire des Prieres publiques, de l’Administrations des Sacreman;...
A Londres, pour Jean Dunmore & Octavien Pulleyn le Jeune … 1667.
First edition of this translation, printed for the use of ‘toutes les Eglisses Paroissiales & dans les Chapelles de Isles de Jersey, Guernsey, & autres Isles adjacentes’, as well as for the French congregation at the Savoy in London.
£750
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BOSWELL, James.
A Letter to the People of Scotland, on the alarming Attempt to infringe the Articles of Union, and introduce a...
London: Printed for Charles Dilly … 1785.
First edition of Boswell’s second Letter to the People of Scotland, written to oppose a bill in Parliament for reducing the number of the Lords of Session from fifteen to ten. Boswell, who believed that this attack on the highest court in Scotland for civil causes was a direct infringement of the Articles...
£1500
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BRITISH MUSEUM.
List of Missing English Theological and Devotional Books.
[London, 1940s.]
Mimeographed typescript of books missing after the losses suffered by the British Museum Library during the Second World War. This is one of several lists of books destroyed, produced both as a record and as a tool for acquiring replacement copies – this copy appears to have been used for that...
£275
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BURNEY, Charles.
An Account of the musical Performances in Westminster-Abbey, and the Pantheon, May 26th, 27th, 29th; and June...
London, Printed for the Benefit of the musical Fund; and sold by T. Payne and Son ... 1785.
First edition. The Handel Commemoration Concerts of 1784, conceived the previous year by Viscount Fitzwilliam, Sir Watkins Williams Wynn and Joah Bates to celebrate the centenary of the birth of George Frederick Handel, were performances on a scale then unprecedented in England. On the morning of Wednesday...
£1250
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[BUTLER, John].
Some Account of the Character of the late Right Honourable Henry Bilson Legge.
London: Printed for J. Almon … 1764.
First edition. Henry Bilson Legge (1708-1764), three times chancellor of the exchequer between 1754 and 1761, attracted both respect and censure. To Pitt, he was ‘the child, and deservedly the favourite child, of the Whigs’. Horace Walpole, on the other hand, thought him a man ‘of a creeping, underhand...
£200
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CADOGAN, William Bromley.
The Felicity of God’s Children, considered in a Sermon, preached upon the Death of a Lady, in the parish...
Reading: Printed and Sold by Smart and Cowslade; and sold by J. Rusher, Reading; Messrs. Robinsons, V. Griffiths ... & J. Matthews ... London;...
First edition, a funeral sermon by the popular preacher William Bromley Cadogan, a friend of John Newton, for the local widow Maria Littlehales, printed at the request of her children. A younger son of the third Earl of Cadogan, the well-connected churchman was vicar of St. Giles, Reading, and rector...
£75
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CAESAR, Gaius Julius.
[Opera] quae extant.
London, J. Brindley, 1744.
An attractive set of Brindley’s duodecimo Caesar, edited by the Irish classicist Usher Gahagan. The Caesar is one of several small-format classics published by Brindley in 1744, for which Gahagan was employed as editor. He subsequently produced versions of Quintus Curtius and Catullus, Propertius,...
£400
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CAMPBELL, Thomas.
Autograph letter, signed, to the novelist and socialite Lady Morgan, explaining why he cannot join her party.
‘Wednesday Morning’, no date, but late 1840.
‘I have been dying also several times during the last six months – I hope however to survive a few weeks when I shall be nearer to you when, in my new house in Victoria Square, I shall hope to see you frequently.’ Campbell suffered increasing ill health towards the end of his life, but continued...
£175