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.

  1. MADELENET, Gabriel.

    Carminum libellus. Parisiis, apud Claudium Cramoisy... M. DC. LXII.

    Paris, 1662.

    First edition, the author’s only book, edited after his death by Loménie de Brienne, this copy ruled in red and bound for the editor with his arms.

    £2250

  2. 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

  3. MARKISH, Peretz Davidovich.

    Brat’ia [Brothers].

    Moscow, Goslitizdat, 1935.

    First edition in Russian of Markish’s epic poem Brider (Brothers, Kiev, 1929), an optimistic work glorifying the Communist regime. The editor is Grigory Petnikov, and the translators D. Brodsky, V. Bugaevsky, S. Lipkin, Maria Petrova, A. Tarkovsky, N. Ushakov, A. Shteinberg and A. Shpirt.

    £1200

  4. MARLOWE, Christopher, and George CHAPMAN.

    The amorous Poem entitled Hero and Leander … Together with two Lyrics by Chr....

    London, [Chiswick Press] for the Golden Hours Press, 1933 [and sold by Hollis & Carter].

    No. 104a – from the balance of the original edition of 200, unsold copies of which were taken over by Hollis & Carter and retailed ‘in a less elaborate binding’, numbered from 1a.

    £350

  5. 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

  6. [MEIN, Robert.] 

    A Nominal Encomium on the Election of Magistrates at Michaelmass 1764. 

    [Edinburgh, 1764.] 

    First edition, very rare, a poem celebrating both the election of James Stuart of Binend as Lord Provost of Edinburgh, and the plans for the construction of Edinburgh New Town, of which building was to commence in 1767.  Typically for Mein he anagrammatizes his subject as ‘A Just Master’,...

    £450

  7. MELECRINIS, Maria Teresa. 

    Le voci del cuore a Maria Teresa Melecrinis dei baroni di Ioppolo e Coccorino che a di 6 luglio 1846...

    Naples, stamperia dell' Iride, 1846. 

    Very rare collection of odes and sonnets composed to mark the entry of Maria Teresa Melecrinis into the Benedictine monastery of San Paolo at Sorrento. 

    £175

  8. MEREDITH, George.

    Poems …

    London: John W. Parker and Son … [1851].

    First edition of Meredith’s first book, which he brought out at his ‘own risk, losing £50 or £60 on the venture’. ‘Not surprisingly he acquired a strong distate for what he later regarded as juvenilia with direct relationship to his first marriage’ (Collie), and there is some suggestion that...

    £700

  9. MEREDITH, George.

    Modern Love, and Poems of the English Roadside, with Poems and Ballads.

    London: Chapman & Hall, 1862.

    First edition of a major Victorian collection of poems. The title poem, a daring and innovative work for its day, adapts the sonnet sequence tradition (though in poems of sixteen lines) to the emotional realities of a failed contemporary marriage, tracing the course of estrangement as love gives way...

    £450

  10. MOLAJONI, Bartolomeo. 

    Alla neogama donzella Marianna Molajoni negli Sforza, Bartolomeo Molajoni germano dirigge il seguente sonetto...

    Viterbo, brothers Poggiarelli, 1811. 

    Seemingly unrecorded sonnet addressed to the newlywed Marianna Molajoni by her brother Bartolomeo and dedicated to the sottoprefetto of Viterbo, Giulio Zelli Pazzaglia. 

    £275

  11. MOORE, George.

    Manuscript commonplace book of poems, songs, prayers, and letters.

    1805-1855.

    An appealing commonplace book of verses and songs, with occasional prayers and letters, mostly written by George Moore (1794–1854), a London soda water manufacturer and amateur poet who was murdered by the notorious French revolutionary Emmanuel Barthélemy (1823–1855).

    £550

  12. [MOORE, Thomas.]

    The Fudge Family in Paris. Edited by Thomas Brown, the Younger …

    London: Printed for Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown … 1818.

    First edition, the comic result of a trip to France with Samuel Rogers, ‘a set of verse epistles attributed to writers ranging from a servile creature of the tories to a passionate champion of Ireland, with some light relief from Miss Biddy Fudge, a young lady of fashion’ (ODNB). It was very...

    £125

  13. [MORGAN, Macnamara].

    The Causidicade. A Panegyri-Satiri-Serio-Comic-Dramatical Poem. On the strange Resignation, and stranger-Promotion....

    London: Printed for M. Cooper … 1743

    First edition, a verse satire on the sudden resignation as solicitor-general of Sir John Strange, one of the ‘old corps’ who still supported Walpole after his fall, and the appointment as his successor of William Murray, a member of the Duke of Newcastle’s circle. There is a satirical ‘Dramatis...

    £125

  14. [MUNDY, Francis].

    The Fall of Needwood.

    Derby: Printed at the Office of J. Drewry. 1808.

    First edition.

    £350

  15. [MURAT, J.-B. de.] 

    La destinée d’une jolie femme, poème érotique, en six chants, par J.B… de M… 

    Paris, Langlois for Mongie, An XI (1803). 

    First and only edition, very scarce, of this humorous moralising tale of love and loss in verse, intended for a female readership and hidden under the ‘transparent veil’ of erotic poetry. 

    £650

  16. [NAPOLEONIC ITALY.] 

    Alla società delle gentilissime signore di Moncalieri dilettanti del giuoco del tavolazzo. Sonetto bernesco-morale...

    Turin, Giacomo Fea, 1799.

    An unrecorded sonnet addressed to the Society of the Gentlewomen of Moncalieri, a town just south of Turin whose castle is one of the Savoy Residences, and in particular to the ‘Abbess’ of the society, by the corps of soldiers stationed in the town shortly after the Battle of Marengo.

    £575

  17. OVERBURY, Sir Thomas.

    Sir Thomas Overbury His Wife. With Additions of new Characters, and many other Witty Conceits never before...

    London, Printed by John Haviland, for A. Crooke … 1638.

    Sixteenth edition of the most popular character book of the early seventeenth century.

    £600

  18. 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

  19. OWEN, John.

    John Owen’s Epigrams for Prince Henry. The Text of the Presentation Manuscript in the Library of Trinity College...

    Douglas, Isle of Man, published by Bernard Quaritch Ltd., 2012.

    Printed here for the first time is the text of an autograph manuscript of the epigrams which John Owen presented to Prince Henry, eldest son of James VI of Scotland (I of England), on the occasion of his becoming Prince of Wales in 1610. The small quarto, preserved at Trinity College, Cambridge, is the...

    £20