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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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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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
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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
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MEREDITH, George.
Modern Love, and Poems of the English Roadside, with Poems and Ballads.
London, Chapman & Hall, 1862.
First edition of a daring and innovative Victorian collection of poems adapting 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 to discord, jealousy, unhappiness, and...
£450
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MIRANDULA (or MIRANDOLA), Ottaviano.
Illustrium poetarum flores.
Antwerp, Joannes Bellerus, 1563.
A remarkable copy, with numerous and eloquent contemporary annotations and additions in a French hand, of a scarce edition of an extremely popular collection of quotes and passages from classics of poetry, published by the renowned Flemish printer and composer Joannes Bellerus (Jean Bellère,...
£1950
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MOORE, Thomas.
Lalla Rookh, an Oriental Romance … eleventh Edition.
London, [A. & R. Spottiswoode for] Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, & Brown, 1822.
An early edition of Thomas Moore’s popular orientalist poem Lalla Rookh, owned by a young Siegfried Sassoon.
£450
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MOUSSON, Pierre.
Tragoediae seu diversarum gentium et imperiorum magni principes. Dati in theatrum collegii regii Henrici magni ...
La Flèche, George Griveau, 1621.
First edition, provincially-printed, of four Neo-Latin tragedies by the French Jesuit professor and playwright Pierre Mousson (c. 1560–1637) inspired by four great figures from the classical world.
£725
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[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 to the female players of tavolazzo – a Piedmontese sport along the lines of target shooting – at the Society of the Gentlewomen of Moncalieri; the rules of the sport would be formally laid out in 1780.
£375
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[NUPTIALIA.]
Per le Faustissime Nozze del Nobile Signor Bartolomeo Grillenzoni di Carpi colla Nobile Signora Contessa Luigia Giacobazzi...
Guastalla, ‘Nella Regio-Ducale Stamperia di Salvatore Costa e Comp.’, 1791.
Seemingly unrecorded, provincially printed sonnets written to mark the marriage of Bartolomeo Grillenzoni and Luigia Gioacobazzi, dedicated to the father of the groom.
£250
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[NUPTIALIA.]
Bartolomeo MOLAJONI. Alla neogama donzella Marianna Molajoni negli Sforza, Bartolomeo Molajoni germano dirigge il...
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
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[ORDE, John Powlett.]
A collection of 111 original compositions in Latin (and occasionally Greek) verse and prose.
Eton, 1818–1820.
A delightful insight into classical education at Eton, where until the mid-nineteenth century Greek and Latin were the only official classroom subjects, and Latin composition was considered a key accomplishment.
£1750
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[ORPHIC POEMS.]
Ορφεως αργοναυτικα υμνοι και περι λιθων. Orphei Argonautica hymni et de lapidibus...
Utrecht, Willem van de Water, 1689.
First Eschenbach edition, presenting the ‘Argonautica Orphica’, an anonymous fourth-century Greek epic probably based on the Argonautica of Apollonius Rhodius, which had been rediscovered in the fifteenth century by Constantine Lascaris, alongside the Orphic Hymns and the Lithica,...
£325
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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
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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
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[OXFORD UNIVERSITY.]
Pietas Universitatis Oxoniensis in obitum serenissimi Regis Georgii II. et gratulatio in augustissimi Regis...
Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1761.
First edition, one of fifty copies on large paper, an exceptional survival in the most luxurious (and fragile) of presentation bindings: full purple velvet with gold-fringed purple silk ties, typically reserved for a handful or fewer of royal copies.
£10000
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PARNASSIUM (The)
: or Beauties of English Poetry. Selected from the Works of Blair, Philips, Young, Pope, Gray, Parnell … The...
London: Printed for W. Lane … [after 1776.]
A very scarce reissue by the enterprising William Lane, later of the Minerva Press, of A Collection of Modern Poems (London, J. James, 1762) – with a cancel title-page and a new frontispiece. The contents comprise the Love of Fame and The Last Day by Young, Gray’s Elegy, The...
£325
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PAZZI, Antonio de, and Torquato TASSO.
Stanze inedite di Antonio de Pazzi e di Torquato Tasso in biasimo ed in lode delle...
Venice, Picotti, 1810.
Scarce first edition of verses ‘in blame and in praise of women’ by Antonio de Pazzi and Torquato Tasso, edited by the eminent antiquary and librarian Jacopo Morelli (1745–1819) from a previously unpublished manuscript in the Biblioteca Marciana, Venice, and dedicated to Baron Antonio Mulazzani...
£200
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PEACOCK, Thomas Love.
Rhododaphne: or the Thessalian Spell. A Poem.
London, T. Hookham, Jun., and Baldwin, Cradock, and Joy, 1818.
First edition of Peacock’s last and most ambitious poem, inspired by his enthusiasm for Greek poetry in the company of Shelley. A mythological narrative set in ancient Thessaly, Rhododaphne tells the story of the shepherd boy Anthemion, in love with the mortal girl Calliroë, and of the...
£750
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[PEMBERTON, Henry].
Observations on Poetry, especially the epic: occasioned by the late Poem upon Leonidas.
London: Printed by H. Woodfall. Sold by J. Brotherton … J. Nourse … and T. Dodsley … 1738.
First edition, a piece of literary criticism inspired by Richard Glover’s long poem Leonidas (1737), ‘a high-minded epic on the virtuous resistance by the Spartan king (perhaps an optimistic portrait of Frederick [Prince of Wales]) to the effeminate and treacherous Persian army’ (Oxford...
£325
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PERSIUS; [Thomas BREWSTER, translator].
The Satires of Persius translated into English Verse; with some occasional Notes;...
London, Printed for A. Millar, 1751.
Second edition, with the addition of Bayle’s life of Persius, with manuscript corrections.
£375