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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PITOU, Louis-Ange.
L’Urne des Stuarts et des Bourbons, ou le fond de ma conscience, sur les causes et les effets des vingt-un...
Paris, [Beraud for] L.A. Pitou, 31 August 1815.
First and only surviving edition of this account of executed royals from England and France by the royalist publisher and propagandist Louis-Ange Pitou (1767–1846), published on the return of Louis XVIII to Paris after the Hundred Days.
£650
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PLINY the Younger, Gaius SUETONIUS TRANQUILLUS, and Julius OBSEQUENS.
C. Plinii Secundi Novocomensis Epistolarum...
[(Colophon:) Venice, in the house of Aldus and Andrea Torresano, June 1518.]
The second Aldine edition of the letters of Pliny the Younger, with marks of early German ownership and annotations.
£975
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PLUTARCH.
...
Venice, Nicolao di Aristotile detto Zoppino, March 1525.
An attractive illustrated edition of twenty-seven of Plutarch’s lives, extensively annotated by a Papal tax-collector, in a striking contemporary binding.
£2750
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POMPONIO LETO, Giulio.
In omnia quae quidem extant, P. Vergilii Maronis Opera, Commentarii, varia multarum rerum cognitione referti,...
Basel, [Johann Oporinus, 1544].
Second edition of Leto’s influential commentary on all the works of Virgil, ‘the first to deal with all the works attributed to Virgil, and also the most extensive and complete, and therefore certainly the most important commentary written in the fifteenth century’ (Stok, p. 204).
£450
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[POPE, Walter.]
The Memoires of Monsieur Du Vall: containing the history of his Life and Death. Whereunto are annexed his last...
London, Printed for Henry Brome … 1670.
First(?) edition of a partly fictitious and often satirical life of the highwayman Claude Duval, published shortly after his execution in 1670. This is the more substantial of two opportunistic biographies, between them the main sources of information about him, though by no means entirely trustworthy. ...
£750
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POSTEL, Guillaume, and Anthonius THYSIUS.
De Republica, seu magistratibus Atheniensium liber … Accessit Antonii Thysii IC. Discursus...
Leiden, Jean Maire, 1645.
An uncommon Leiden edition of Postel’s study of the Athenian magistracy, first published 1541 and revised and enlarged in 1551. Jean Ballesdens edited an edition for Maire in 1635; this 1645 edition added an essay on the same topic by the librarian and historian Anthony Thysius the Younger (1603–1665),...
£200
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POUND, Ezra.
The Letters … 1907-1941. Edited by D. D. Paige
… London, Faber & Faber, [1951].
First English edition, an association copy.
£150
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POUND, Ezra.
The Classic Anthology defined by Confucius.
London, Faber & Faber, 1955.
First English edition, first printing, comprising sheets of the Harvard University Press edition (1954) with a cancel Faber title-page.
£175
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POUND, Ezra.
Gaudier-Brzeska, a Memoir …
[London,] The Marvell Press, [1960].
Revised edition, inscribed by Dorothy Pound on behalf of her husband to ‘J[oyce] + G[eoffrey] Bridson. DP for EP / Sept 1961. Brunnenburg’.
£250
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RACHEWILTZ, Boris de.
L’Elemento magico in Ezra Pound.
Milan, All’insegna del pesce d’oro [Scheiwiller], 1965.
First edition, no. 182 of 1000 copies, an essay by Pound’s son-in-law published on the occasion of Pound’s eightieth birthday.
£150
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[REEVE, Gabriel].
Directions left by a Gentleman to his Sonns: for the Improvement of barren and heathy Land, in England and Wales.
London, Printed by E. T. and R. H. for R. Royston … 1670
Sole edition of one of the first books in English devoted to soil conservation. The dedication is signed Gabriel Reeve and dated from Hackney, 14 April 1670.
£650
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REFUGE, Eustace de; Girolamo CANINI, translator.
Trattato della corte del Signor di Refuge. Tradotto di Francese in questo...
Venice, Giovanni Battista Ciotti, 1621.
First edition in Italian, rare, of this treatise on courtly behaviour attributed to the French statesman Eustache de Refuge (1564–1617), a seventeenth-century bestseller combining Machiavelli with Castiglione, with folding letterpress flowcharts by the translator, Giuseppe Canini, who had also produced...
£1850
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REMARKS ON FOG’S JOURNAL,
of February 10. 1752/3. Exciting the People to an Assassination.
London: Printed for J. Wilford …1733
First edition. In order to reduce the burden of the land tax on the country gentlemen upon whom his ministry depended, and to shift government revenues to other sources, Walpole revived the excise on salt and was considering substituting excise for customs duties on wine and tobacco. This led to alarms...
£150
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[RICHARDSON, Jonathan.]
The general Address (in two Parts) of the Outinian Lecturer to his Auditors…
London, Printed by W. Nicol, late Bulmer & Co., 1822.
Rare first edition of a revised version of the valedictory lecture given by the Outinian Society on 31 December 1818 to mark the centenary of the death of William Penn (1644–1717), founder of the Pennsylvania Colony, drawing on information supplied by the Society’s founder, Penn’s grandson.
£1600
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R., N.
Proverbs English, French, Dutch, Italian and Spanish. All Englished and alphabetically digested …
London, Printed for Simon Miller … 1659.
First and only edition of a scarce collection of idiomatic phrases and proverbs, many translated from other languages, with a selection of 114 ‘Golden sentences’ at the end.
£1750
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ROHAN, Henri, Duke of; [Henry HUNT, translator].
A Treatise of the Interest of the Princes and States of Christendome....
London, Richard Hodgkinson, 1641.
First edition in England (and second in English) of this groundbreaking work on political interest and the balance of power by the leader of the Huguenots, this copy with hitherto unnoticed printing variants.
£1800
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ROUGEMONT, François de; [Sebastião de MAGALHÃES, translator].
Relacam do estado politico e espiritual do imperio da China, pellos...
Lisbon, Joao da Costa, 1672.
First edition in any language of the Dutch Jesuit François de Rougemont’s history of mid seventeenth-century China, published a year before the Latin original. Inspired to join the Chinese missions after meeting the famed Jesuit sinologist Martino Martini in Louvain, Rougemont arrived in Macao...
£2500
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[RUSSELL, William].
The History of modern Europe. With an Account of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, and a View of the...
London, Robinson, Robson, Walter, and Sewell, 1779.
Extremely rare first appearance of an ‘Enlightened history’. This first edition was published in the same year as a Dublin imprint. Two further volumes were issued in 1784, and the whole work issued as a five-volume set in 1786.
£1950
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SALLUST.
Caii Sallustii Crispi quae extant.
London, James Tonson and John Watts, 1713.
First Maittaire edition. The French-born classical scholar Michel Maittaire (1668–1741) studied at Westminster, and then under Robert South at Christ Church, Oxford. He is best known for his Annales Typographici and the series of duodecimo classics that he published with Tonson and Watts...
£300
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[SARPI, Paolo (pseud.).] ‘Pietro Soave POLANO’.
Historia del Concilio Tridentino di Pietro Soave Polano. Seconda...
Geneva, Pierre Aubert, 1629.
Second edition, the first to omit the extraneous additions of the 1619 edition introduced by Marco Antonio de Dominis, of the influential and groundbreaking history of the Council of Trent by Paolo Sarpi (1552–1623), described by Milton as ‘the great unmasker’.
£450