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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[WEDDING POETRY.]
Applausi alli felicissimi sponsali dell’illustrissimo Sig. Cavaliere Deifebo Perini Brancadori, con l’illustrissima...
Siena, Stamperia del Pubblico, 1699.
Seemingly unrecorded collection of sonnets written to mark the marriage of two Sienese nobles, Deifebo Perini Brancadori and Ottavia Orlandini. The fourteen sonnets, whose authorship remains unknown, take inspiration from the family name of the groom and aspects of the arms of both families, with...
£350
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[WESTMINSTER ELECTION.]
A True and impartial Collection of Pieces, in Prose and Verse, which have been written and published on...
London: Printed for W. Owen … 1749.
First edition of a compilation of open letters to the electorate of Westminster, written during the violent 1749 election campaign.
£750
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WHITEHEAD, William.
Plays and Poems … in two Volumes …
London, Printed for J. Dodsley … 1774.
First and only edition of the collected works of William Whitehead, a protégé of Alexander Pope and poet laureate from 1757-85.
£350
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WHITMAN, Walt, and Antonio FRASCONI (illustrator).
A Whitman Portrait.
[New York, Spiral Press, 1960.]
First edition, comprising extracts from Leaves of Grass, facsimile letters and a selection of woodcut ‘portraits’ by Frasconi. Numbered 149 of 525 copies signed by Frasconi, printed on Japanese Goyu paper.
£250
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WITHER, George.
Speculum Speculativum: or, a Considering-Glasse; being an Inspection into the present and late sad Condition of...
London, Written June XIII. MDCLX. and there Imprinted the same year [1660].
The third of three editions in the same year, from an entirely new setting of type, with ‘Glasse’ rather than ‘Glass’ on the title-page, the errata formerly printed on L8 corrected, and the errors corrected in the caption title on p. 1
£525
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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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YEATS, William Butler.
The Poems …
London, Macmillan and Co. Ltd, 1949.
No. 191 of 375 copies, signed, of which 25 were for private distribution. At the time of publication this was the definitive collected edition of Yeats’s poetry. Yeats had prepared the proofs and signed the limitation leaves before his death in 1939, but final publication was delayed by the war.
£2750
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ZANCHI, Basilio.
Dictionarium poeticum, et epitheta veterum poetarum … nunc secondo trans Alpes editum.
Mons, Luca Rivius, 1612.
Scarce Mons-printed edition of Zanchi’s classical onomasticon from A to Z, providing a comprehensive list of deities, notable figures, and locations from the works of Virgil, Horace, Tibullus, Ovid, and Propertius.
£375
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ZAPPI, Giambattista and Faustina.
Rime di Giambattista Felice Zappi e di Faustina Maratti sua consorte.
Nice, Société typographique, 1781.
Uncommon Nice printing of the collected poetry of one of the most prominent literary couples of early eighteenth-century Rome, Faustina Maratti (1679–1745) and her husband Giambattista Zappi (1667–1719). First published after Zappi’s death in 1723, the collection consists of seventy-three...
£200
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ZUKOFSKY, Louis.
Some Time. Short Poems …
Stuttgart, Jonathan Williams, 1956.
First edition, one of 300 copies, inscribed ‘for D. G. Bridson, Sept. 21, 1957, Louis Zukofsky’.
£500