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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SULIVAN, Richard Joseph.
Philosophical Rhapsodies. Fragments of Akbur of Betlis. Containing Reflections on the Laws, Manners, Customs...
London: Printed for T. Becket … Bookseller to his Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, and their Royal Highnesses the Princes. 1784-5.
First edition of this eccentric travel-inspired treatise drawing upon the author’s experience in India and his travels in Europe. The prefatory ‘advertisement’ establishes the fiction that ‘the following fragments were written by a native of Assyria [Akbur], who … was removed to the continent...
£950
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[SWEDENBORG, Emanuel].
De nova Hierosolyma et ejus Doctrina Coelesti: ex Auditis e Coelo. Quibus praemittitur aliquid de Novo Coelo...
Londoni: [Printed by John Lewis,] 1758.
First edition of Swedenborg’s ‘New Jerusalem’, in which he describes a new church based on faith, charity and the unification of existing protestant churches.
£975
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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, C.
Cornelius; Justus LIPSIUS and Hugo GROTIUS (editors). [Opera] C. Corn. Tacitus ex I. Lipsii editione cum not. et...
Leiden, Elzevir, 1640.
First edition with Grotius’s notes, elegantly bound in early nineteenth-century English morocco. Elzevir had published an edition of Lipsius’s Tacitus in 1634; Dibdin notes ‘Of these elegant little editions [of 1634 and 1640], that of 1640 is preferred, on account of its having the notes...
£500
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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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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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[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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VERTOT, Abbé de.
The History of the Revolutions of Portugal. By M. l’Abbe de Vertot, member of the Royal Academy of Inscriptions...
Glasgow, printed by R. Urie for D. Baxter, 1750.
Uncommon first Glasgow edition of this English translation of the Histoire des révolutions de Portugal, a classic account of the Portuguese Restoration War against Spain (1640-1668) by the French historian René-Aubert Vertot (1655–1735).
£150
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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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[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
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WILLICH, Anthony Florian Madinger.
Lectures on Diet and Regimen: being a systematic Inquiry into the most rational Means of preserving...
London: Printed for T. N. Longman and O. Rees … 1799.
Second edition, much revised and expanded, printed in the same year as the first: ‘Many important and useful articles have been added, especially in the fifth Chapter, “Of Food and Drink.”’ Willich’s very popular manual was based on a series of lecture given by the eminent physician at Bath...
£375
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WISE, Francis.
A Letter to Dr Mead concerning some Antiquities in Berkshire, particularly shewing that the White Horse, which gives...
Oxford, Printed for Thomas Wood … 1738
First editions. A Letter to Dr Mead was the first serious archaeological study of the Uffington White Horse. Francis Wise, Keeper of the Archives at Oxford University and later a friend of Samuel Johnson, contends that the horse, which he eulogises as a work of art, had Saxon origins, because...
£350
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WOOLLEY, C. Leonard and Thomas Edward LAWRENCE.
The Wilderness of Zin ... With a Chapter on the Greek Inscriptions by M.N. Tod....
London: The Alden Press for Jonathan Cape, 1936.
Second English edition. The Wilderness of Zin originally appeared as the Palestine Exploration Fund Annual for 1914-1915, and was the first work by Lawrence to appear in book form. However, it was included in the P.E.F. series on somewhat disingenuous grounds: ‘During January and February 1914,...
£150
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WYCHERLEY, William.
The Posthumous Works … in Prose and Verse. Faithfully publish’d from his original Manuscripts, by Mr. Theobald....
London: Printed for A. Bettesworth, J. Osborn, W. Mears, W. and J. Innys, J. Peele, T. Woodward; and F. Clay. 1728.
First edition of an important collection, comprising 308 maxims, one short essay and a large number of previously unpublished poems (the third paginated sequence), based on manuscripts acquired from Captain Thomas Shrimpton, Wycherley’s sole executor.
£850
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XENOPHON.
De Cyri regis Persarum vita atque disciplina, libri VIII.
Paris, Andreas Wechel, 1572.
First edition of Joachim Camerarius’ Latin translation of Xenophon’s Cyropaedia, a partly fictional work on the life and education of Cyrus the Great which served as a model for medieval and renaissance mirrors of princes, including Machiavelli’s Il Principe. A beautiful...
£875