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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[SWIFT, Jonathan].
Miscellanies in Prose and Verse.
London: Printed for John Morphew ... 1711.
First edition, ordinary paper issue, the very rare first state, with G6-7 preserved (though slashed for cancellation); the cancellans was printed on A8, not here present.
£1250
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TACITUS.
C. Cornelius Tacitus, cum optimis exemplaribus collatus.
Amsterdam, Daniel Elzevir, 1678.
A remarkably fresh set of the third and final Elzevir edition of this format, reprinted from the edition of 1665.
£275
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TACITUS, Publius Cornelius.
The Annales … The Description of Germanie. [–The End of Nero and Beginning of Galba. Foure Bookes...
[London, Arnold Hatfield for Bonham and John Norton,] 1612.
Third collected edition of the Annals translated by Richard Grenewey, first published in 1598, and of The End of Nero, Histories and Agricola, translated by Henry Savile, first published in 1591; this is a paginary reprint, with the same unusual title-page, of the edition of 1604/5.
£1500
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TASSO, Torquato; Giovanni Francesco NEGRI, translator.
[Drop-head title:] Della tradottione della Gierusalemme liberata...
[Bologna, 1628.]
Rare first edition of Tasso’s Gerusalemme liberata to be translated into dialect, here in facing Bolognese and Italian translation, its printing suspended midway through the thirteenth canto, likely by Cardinal Bernardino Spada, a friend of the translator and the dedicatee of the work.
£1500
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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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TO THE PARLIAMENT OF ENGLAND,
who are in Place to do Justice, and to break the Bonds of the oppressed. A Narrative of the cruel,...
London, Printed for Thomas Simmons …, 1659.
First edition, rare, a list of Quaker victims of persecution in Ireland with details of their sufferings. The pamphlet was published and undersigned by a group of the victims including the country’s reputed first Quaker, William Edmondson, and Thomas Holme, who went on to publish A Brief...
£300
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TO THE REVEREND
and merry Answerer of Vox Cleri. To be left at Mr. Brabazon Aylmer’s at the Three Pigeons in Cornhill. With a Bundle.
[London, s.n., 1690.]
First and only edition. Attempts to revise the Book of Common Prayer in the wake of the 1689 Toleration Act found opposition in, among others, the Exeter clergyman Thomas Long. His Vox cleri, or, The Sense of the Clergy, concerning the making of Alterations in the established Liturgy (1690)...
£150
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THOMSON, James.
Essays and Phantasies …
London: Reeves and Turner … 1881.
First edition of a volume of essays by the author of The City of Dreadful Night. Most are probably reprinted from the National Reformer, the Secularist, or Cope’s Tobacco Plant, to which ‘the laureate of pessimism’ was a regular contributor.
£150
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THORNBURY, George Walter.
Art and Nature at Home and Abroad …
London: Hurst and Blackett, Publishers, Successors to Henry Colburn … 1856.
First edition: an early collection of essays by Thornbury (1828-1876), a prolific (and famously cacographic) writer who is closely associated with Dickens for his work on Household Words and All the Year Round (‘one of Charles Dickens’s most valuable contributors’; Dickens, Letters,...
£450
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[TREATIES.]
Volume of tracts on European treaties of peace and alliance.
Vienna and Amsterdam, 1725-1731.
A collection of scarce texts relating to the Peace of Vienna (1725) and subsequent treaties of Hanover (1725), Paris (1727), Seville (1729), and Vienna (1731), with contemporary manuscript additions in Italian and French clearly composed by someone in diplomatic service. The collection eloquently...
£1750
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TURNER, Sharon.
The sacred history of the world, as displayed in the creation and subsequent events to the deluge. Attempted to...
London, Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, Green and Longman, 1832 [– 1834; – 1837].
First edition, each volume with a presentation letter from the author (dated 1 March 1832, 12 December 1834, and 27 March 1837 respectively) to the classical scholar Thomas Gaisford.
£500
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TYRE, William, Archbishop of, and Giuseppe OROLOGGI (translator).
Historia della guerra sacra di Gierusalemme,...
Venice, Vincenzo Valgrisi, 1562.
First Italian edition of William of Tyre’s (1130–1186) important account of the first two crusades and of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, with the addition of a seventeenth-century manuscript detailing a uniquely Italian rendition of the tale of the Wandering Jew.
£2800
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[UNGER, Salomo Gottlob.]
Geschichte des Oesterreich-Russischen und Türkischen Krieges, in den Jahren von 1787. bis 1792. Nebst...
Leipzig, Wilhelm Gottlob Sommer, 1792.
First and only edition, extremely rare, of this account of the Austro-Turkish War of 1788-1791, and of the concurrent Russo-Turkish war of 1787-92. It includes the full texts of the Treaty of Sistova of 4 August 1791 and of a separate convention attached to it, in both French and German. While...
£1250
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VALERIUS MAXIMUS.
Dictorum et factorum memorabilium libri novem.
[(Colophon:) Venice, Aldus Manutius, October 1502] [April 1503].
First Aldine edition, variant ‘B’ with four additional leaves in quire A, with numerous early annotations.
£2750
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VELLEIUS PATERCULUS.
Historiae Romanae duo volumina, ad M. Vinicium Cos. progenerum Tiberii Caesaris, per Beatum Rhenanum Selestadiensem...
[(Colophon:) Basel, Johann Froben, November 1520.]
Editio princeps of a summary history of Rome to AD 29 by the soldier-turned-historian Velleius Paterculus, edited from a now lost manuscript by the German humanist Beatus Rhenanus (1485–1547), with tipped-in notes by a contemporary student of Roman history displaying a remarkable concern...
£2750
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VELLEIUS PATERCULUS.
Quae supersunt ex historiae Romanae voluminibus duobus. Ex editione Petri Burmanni fideliter expressa.
Glasgow, Robert and Andrew Foulis, 1752.
First and only Foulis Press edition, unusually found here in a contemporary Scandinavian binding, evidence of the high esteem in which these products of the Glasgow enlightenment were held across Europe.
£425
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WALKER, John.
An economical History of the Hebrides and Highlands of Scotland ... in two Volumes ... Edinburgh: Printed at the...
Edinburgh: Printed at the University Press; 1808
First edition. The eminent naturalist John Walker (1731-1803), professor of natural history in the University of Edinburgh (Smollett was one of his students) and keeper of the university museum, made six long journeys into the Highlands and Islands from 1760 to 1786. He was commissioned by the General...
£450
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WALTON, Izaak.
The Life of Dr. Sanderson, late Bishop of Lincoln ... to which is added, some short Tracts or Cases of Conscience,...
London, Printed for Richard Marriott. 1678.
First edition, the last of Walton’s five celebrated Lives.
£400
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[WASHINGTON, George.] PAINE, Thomas.
An Eulogy on the Life of General George Washington, who died at Mount Vernon, December 14th,...
Newburyport, Edmund M. Blunt, 1800.
First edition of this eulogy on Washington, ‘the saviour of your country’ and ‘father of his people’. This is the issue with urn woodcut on the final verso. Thomas Paine (1773–1811, not to be confused with the author of Common Sense) later changed his name to that of his father,...
£250
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[WILLIAMS, John.]
The History of the Gunpowder-Treason, collected from approved Authors, as well popish as protestant.
London, Richard Chiswel, 1678.
First edition of an anti-popish history of the Gunpowder Plot. A well informed account drawing on both Anglican and Catholic sources, The History of the Gunpowder-Treason was published anonymously by John Williams (1633/6–1709), later Bishop of Chichester, amid renewed interest in the subject during...
£750