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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LACTANTIUS.
Opera.
[Venice,] Vindelinus de Spira, 1472.
Magnificent incunable edition of the works of Lactantius, a fine product of the first Venetian press, established in 1469 by Johannes de Spira and continued by his brother Vindelinus from 1470 until 1473. This was the fifth impression of the works of Lactantius, the hugely successful North African...
£25000
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ANSELMI, Giorgio, the younger.
Georgii Anselmi nepotis Epigrammaton libri septem. Sosthyrides. Peplum Palladis. Aeglogae...
Venice, Maffeo Pasini, September 1528.
The definitive edition of the epigrams of Giorgio Anselmi, grandson of the astrologer and music theorist of the same name, with several epigrams on his grandfather’s lost works on magic and the occult.
£875
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[VIRGIL.] RAMUS, Petrus (Pierre de la RAMÉE).
...
Paris, André Wechel, 1564.
Second editions of Ramus’s extensive commentaries on Virgil’s two poems on country life, written in reaction to the dry doctrines of several French schools who based their teaching of nature on Aristotle’s Physics. Ramus wanted to keep in contact with the concrete realities of nature...
£950
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VIRGIL Maro, Publius, and Giovanni Andrea dell’ANGUILLARA (trans.).
Il primo libro della Eneida di Vergilio,...
Padua, Gratioso Perchacino, 1564.
First edition of the first book of Anguillara’s verse translation of the Aeneid, a copy printed on strong paper and inscribed by the author. The humanist, poet, and successful translator of Ovid Giovanni Andrea dell’Anguillara (1517–1572) undertook to translate into Italian ottava...
£2500
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CARO, Annibale.
Rime del commendatore Annibal Caro. Col privilegio di N.S. PP. Pio V. et dell’illustrissima signoria di...
Venice, Aldus Manutius the Younger, 1569.
First edition of the poetry of Annibale Caro, offering a scathing yet humorous critique of his greatest poetic rival, Ludovico Castelvetro.
£650
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FERRARI, Giovanni Francesco.
Le rime burlesche, sopra varii, et piacevoli soggetti; indrizzate à diversi nobili signori.
Venice, heirs of Melchior Sessa, 1570.
First edition, rare, of the only work published by Giovanni Francesco Ferrari, a Renaissance court poet of whom little is known. Most information is gleaned, or will be gleaned in the future, from these verses; for example, his attachment to the entourage of the Mantuan prelate Ippolito Capilupi...
£1250
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PARADIN, Guillaume.
Gulielmi Paradini Anchemani Epigrammata ...
Lyons, Ant. Gryphius, 1581.
First and only edition of this French historian’s poetry including verses about or addressed to Ronsard, Pontus de Tyard, Claude Rouillet, and the Lyons printers Sébastien and Antoine Gryphe, and Jean de Tournes.
£950
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PARABOSCO, Girolamo.
Libro primo [- quarto] delle lettere amorose di M. Girolamo Parabosco. Con alcune altre di nuovo aggiunte.
Venice, Domenico Farri, 1581.
Uncommon collected edition of Girolamo Parabosco’s (1524–1557) immensely popular letters to anonymous lovers, literary contemporaries, and a courtesan, with several letters written from a female point of view, this copy formerly in the possession of Tycho Brahe’s nephew and with several manuscript...
£900
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PATRICIUS, Franciscus (Croatian: Franjo Petriš or Frane Petrić, Italian: Francesco Patrizi).
Della poetica...
Ferrara, Vittorio Baldini, 1586.
First edition, a copy with contemporary provenance, of a major Renaissance rejection of Aristotelian literary aesthetics.
£1250
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OVIDIUS Naso, Publius, and Pedro Sánchez de VIANA (transl. and ed.).
Las transformaciones. [issued with:]...
Valladolid, Diego Fernández de Córdoba, 1589.
First edition, a copy of notable provenance, of perhaps the most successful early Spanish translation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, by Pedro Sánchez de Viana (1545–1616), published along with his substantial commentary. In the age of Cervantes (another master of literary transformations), Ovid...
£8000
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HADDON, Walter.
Poematum Gualteri Haddoni, legum doctoris, sparsim collectorum libri duo.
Londini, Per Richardum Yardlei, et Petrum Short, propter aßignatos Gulihelmi Seresii. 1592.
Very rare second edition (first 1576) of the collected Latin verse of the lawyer, poet, and fellow of King’s College, Cambridge, Walter Haddon (1514/15–1571), this copy bound in a contemporary manuscript relating to schoolboy misconduct.
£3750
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FAGNANI, Giovanni Marco.
De bello Arriano libri sex.
Milan, heirs of Pacifico da Ponte and Giovanni Battista Piccaglia, 1604.
First and only edition of the sole published work by the Italian nobleman Giovanni Marco Fagnani (1524–1609), an epic poem recounting Ambrose of Milan’s campaign against local Arians in late fourth-century Lombardy.
£900
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FLETCHER, Giles, the younger.
Christs Victorie, and Triumph in Heaven, and Earth, over, and after Death …
Cambridge, Printed by C. Legge. 1610.
First edition of an important poem, a ‘worthy link’ in the chain which connects Fletcher’s great master, Spenser, with his great successor, Milton (Hugh de Selincourt, CHEL). This is the first state, with a fleur-de-lis device on the title-pages – three copies are known with the title-pages reset...
£3500
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MARINO, Giambattista.
La Murtoleide fischiate del cavalier Marino con la Marineide risate del Murtola.
‘Norinbergh’ [i.e. Venice], Ioseph Stamphier, 1619.
Rare first edition of the manifesto of Italian Baroque poetry, appearing in the bitterly satirical ‘literary feud’ between the leading Italian baroque poet Giambattista Marino and his adversary, Gasparo Murtola. Marino, who thrived in his notoriously misbehaving public persona, had been banned...
£900
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DONNE, John.
Devotions upon Emergent Occasions, and severall Steps in my Sicknes ...
London, Printed for Thomas Jones … 1627.
Third (and last lifetime) edition of Donne’s most familiar prose work, composed during his convalescence in 1623–4 from the ‘spotted Feaver’ which nearly killed him. It consists of twenty-three ‘Stationes, sive Periodi in Morbo’, each comprising a meditation, expostulation, and prayer.
£13500
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MATTHIEU, Pierre, et al.
Tablettes ou quatrains de la vie et de la mort. Par Pierre Matthieu, conseiller du roy.
Première [– troisième] partie … Rouen, Jacques Cailloué, 1628.
Very rare pocket-sized Rouen edition of verses on life and death by the poet and royal historiographer Pierre Matthieu (1563–1621), here printed with further poems by Guy du Faur de Pibrac, Antoine Favre and others. All early editions are extremely rare, many known in a single copy.
£3000
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WITHER, George.
The Psalmes of David translated into Lyrick-Verse, according to the Scope, of the Original, and illustrated, with...
[Amsterdam:] Imprinted in the Netherlands by Cornelis Gerrits van Breughel, 1632.
First edition, dedicated to Princess Elizabeth, the ‘Winter Queen’, daughter of James I. The translation, a companion to Wither’s Hymnes and Songs of the Church, was written at the request of James, and finished shortly before his death in 1625: ‘I was commanded to perfect a Translation...
£3200
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[HABINGTON, William].
Castara … the second Edition. Corrected and augmented.
London, Printed by B. A. & T. F. for Will: Cooke, and are to bee sold at his Shop … 1635.
Second edition, adding to the contents of the first edition (1634) a commendatory poem that reveals Habington’s identity; a ‘second part’ with twenty-six new poems; and three prose characters: ‘A Mistris’ and ‘A Wife’ to introduce the two parts, and ‘A Friend’ to introduce the section...
£3500
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DONNE, John.
Poems … with Elegies on the authors Death …
London, Printed by M. F. for John Marriot, and are to be sold at his Shop … 1635.
Second edition, adding seventeen new poems by Donne (and eleven false attributions), and three more elegies on his death. The poems have been rearranged into sections, headed ‘Songs and Sonets’, ‘Elegies’, ‘Epithalamions’. ‘Satyres’, and ‘Letters’, ‘Divine Poems’, etc. Two poems...
£4500
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SANDYS, George.
A Paraphrase upon the divine Poems …
London, At the Bell in St. Pauls Churchyard. 1638. [Colophon: London, Printed by John Legatt 1637.]
First edition, the issue with the Dedication to Charles I on the title-verso.
£900