Advanced search

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.

Sort by
Author
Price
Date
Title

  1. DAVID, [Pierre Drapeyron de].

    A History of the Campaigns of General Pichegru, containing the Operations of the Armies of the North,...

    London, for G.G.J. & J. Robinson, 1796.

    First edition in English, printed in the same year as the French original, of this account of General Pichegru’s campaigns during the early French Revolutionary Wars.

    £185

  2. [DE LA COSTE.]

    Voyage philosophique d’Angleterre fait en 1783 et 1784.

    A Londres. Et se trouve à Paris, chez Poinçoit … 1787.

    First edition, second issue, with cancel title-pages redated 1787 (first 1786) – an interesting and detailed sociological discussion of England and in the English on the eve of the French Revolution, in the form of discursive letters. The author deals with London’s institutions and buildings, taverns...

    £250

  3. DENNIS, John.

    The Grounds of Criticism in Poetry, contain’d in some new Discoveries never made before, requisite for the Writing...

    London, Printed for Geo. Strahan … and Bernard Lintott … 1704.

    First edition. Published as a ‘preliminary’ to a proposed, but never completed, masterwork, The Grounds of Criticism in Poetry comprises a Preface, Proposal and ‘Specimen’, the latter being an essay substantially on Milton, ‘one of the greatest and most daring Genius’s that has appear’d...

    £1250

  4. DEUBER, A. X.

    Poetische Versuche.

    Bamberg, [cover: ‘im Komptoir der Zeitung’,] 1804.

    First and only edition, very rare, preserving the original binding of printed and gilt pink silk.

    £650

  5. DILWORTH, W. H.

    The History of the Conquest of Mexico, by the celebrated Hernan Cortes. Containing a faithful and entertaining...

    London: Printed for William Anderson … 1759.

    First edition, very scarce, of a history of the conquistadores for young readers, loosely derived from Antonio Solís de Ribadeneyra’s Historia de la Conquista de México.

    £1850

  6. DIO CASSIUS.

    Dione historico delle guerre et fatti de Romani. Tradotto di Greco in lingua vulgare per M. Nicolo Leoniceno. Con...

    Venice, Niccolò Zoppino, March 1533.

    First edition of Dio Cassius’s Roman History in any language, translated into Italian from the original Greek by Niccolò Leoniceno and preceding the Greek editio princeps, printed by Robert Estienne in 1548, by some fifteen years.

    £2500

  7. DIODORUS Siculus.

    Bibliothecae historicae libri XV. Hoc est, quotquot Graece extant de quadraginta quorum quinque nunc primum Latine...

    Basel, Heinrich Petri, August 1559.

    Important edition, the first to be overseen by Sébastien Castellion, of Diodorus’s influential ‘Historical library’.

    £2500

  8. [DISNEY, John].

    Memoirs of Thomas Brand-Hollis Esq. ...

    London: Printed by T. Gillet ... 1808.

    First edition of a privately printed memoir of Thomas Brand of the Hyde, who assumed the name Brand-Hollis on inheriting the Dorset estates (and library and collection of sculpture) of his friend the ‘Republican’ Thomas Hollis, the Whig bibliophile. The author, John Disney, a close friend of Thomas...

    £750

  9. 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

  10. 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

  11. 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

  12. 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

  13. FIDDES, Richard.

    A General Treatise of Morality, form’d upon the Principles of natural Reason only. With a Preface in Answer...

    London: Printed for S. Billingsley … 1724.

    First edition, the variant with the misprint ‘FIDDFS’ in the author’s name on the title. ‘Written against Shaftesbury’s Inquiry Concerning Virtue and Mandeville’s Fable of the Bees, and displaying marked sympathy with the works of Malebranche and [John] Norris of Bemerton, this book was a...

    £850

  14. FLORUS, L. Annaeus; Lucius AMPELIUS; Claude SAUMAISE, editor.

    [Rerum romanarum libri IV and Epitome historiae...

    Leiden, Elzevir, 1638.

    The attractive Elzevir edition of Florus’ Roman history, containing the editio princeps of Ampelius’ history, in a handsome English Restoration binding with highly unusual edge decoration.

    £650

  15. FLORUS, Lucius. 

    Lucii Flori rerum ab urbe condita liber primus [– quartus]. 

    [Venice, in aedibus Aldi et Andreae Soceri, March 1521.] 

    Florus’s epitome of Roman history, extracted from the Aldine edition of March 1521 which comprised an epitome of Livy, Florus, and Niccolò Perotti’s translation of Polybius. 

    £750

  16. [FRYER, Michael, editor.]

    The Trial and Life of Eugene Aram; several of his Letters and Poems; and his Plan and Specimens of an...

    Richmond: Printed by and for M. Bell … 1832

    First edition. The unfortunate Yorkshire schoolmaster Eugene Aram, implicated with the shoemaker Daniel Clark in fraud in 1745, and twelve years later accused of Clark’s murder, was convicted and hanged in 1759. While in prison in York, without books and papers, he produced the Plan and Specimens published...

    £100

  17. FRY, Theodore.

    A brief Memoir of Francis Fry, F.S.A. of Bristol. By his Son … Not published.

    [London, Printed by Barclay and Fry,] 1887.

    First edition. Francis Fry (1803–1886) of Bristol, the preeminent student and collector of English Bibles in his time, was also an active partner in the Quaker family firm of chocolate and porcelain manufacturers and type founders. Among his publications were a facsimile of the first complete...

    £850

  18. FULBECKE, William.

    An Historicall Collection of the continuall Factions, Tumults, and Massacres of the Romans and Italians during...

    London, Printed for William Ponsonby. 1601.

    First edition. Fulbecke’s Historicall Collection ‘was a narrative history of the last years of the Roman republic and it is significant as one of the very few attempts by a Renaissance Englishman to write such a work … An interesting attempt to weave together such often-contradictory...

    £5250

  19. GADESBY, Richard.

    A new and easy Introduction to Geography, by Way of Question and Answer, divided into Lessons. Principally designed...

    London, for the Author, and sold by S. Bladon, 1783.

    Second edition, very rare, published following the success of the first edition (1776) and its use ‘in many principal boarding schools, particularly those for young ladies’. Gadesby, ‘private teacher of writing, accounts, geography, &c.’, laments the neglect of geography, a very necessary...

    £550

  20. GARDINER, John Smallman. 

    The Art and the Pleasures of Hare-Hunting.  In six Letters to a Person of Quality … 

    London: Printed by R. Griffith … 1750. 

    First edition, scarce, of this eloquent and amusing account of hare-hunting, the first monograph on the subject in English, comprising letters on the superiority of hare-hunting to fox-hunting (less dangerous, less laborious), on the best types of dogs, of trailing and starting hares, &c.  Gardiner’s...

    £1250