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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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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[MULLER]. Zacharie, M.
Les Quatre Parties du Jour, Poëme, Traduit de l’Allemand de M. Zacharie.
Paris, J.B.G. Musier fils, 1769.
First edition.
£500
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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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[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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OVID.
In hoc volumine h[a]ec co[n]tinentur. P. Ovidii Nasonis vita. Heroidum epistol[a]e. Amorum libri III. De arte amandi lib....
[(Colophon:) Venice, Bernardino Stagnino, 19 October 1530.]
Very rare pocket-sized edition of selected works by Ovid published at Venice by Bernardino Stagnino (1483–1538).
£1250
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OVID.
P. Ovidii Nasonis operum …
Leiden, [Bonaventure & Abraham] Elzevir, 1629.
First Elzevir edition, newly edited by Daniel Heinsius based on the Plantin edition of 1578.
£500
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OVIDIUS Naso, Publius, and Pedro Sánchez de VIANA, translator and commentator.
Las transformaciones.
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 (c. 1545–1619), a physician by training, published along with his substantial commentary.
£6000
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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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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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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
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PETIOT, Étienne.
Panegyricus Ludovico XIII. vindici rebellionis, domitori Elementorum, æterno triumphatori: Pro fracta Britannia,...
Ferrara, Giuseppe Gironi, 1639.
An extremely rare Ferrarese edition of the hugely popular panegyric to Louis XIII by the Jesuit Étienne Petiot (1602–1675), professor of rhetoric, encomiastic writer, and theologian from Limoges, written on the occasion of the defeat of the Huguenots at the end of the siege of La Rochelle and...
£975
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PICKERING, Amelia.
The Sorrows of Werter: a Poem …
London: Printed for T. Cadell … 1786
First edition. Amelia Pickering’s ‘melancholy, contemplative poem’ (Todd) was one of a spate of works in English and German founded on Goethe’s novel, including poems by Charlotte Smith and Mary Robinson, both subscribers here. Pickering ‘gives to Charlotte a voice, if rather weakly moralistic,...
£1200
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PIEROTTI, A.
Il cervello e la difesa delle donne sestine giocose ... precedute da indirizzo, e dedica in vario metro.
Florence, N. Fabbrini, 1842.
First and only edition, very rare, of this misogynistic poem by the Florentine poet Pierotti, in which he pretends to explore the female brain with reference to Galen, accusing women of, for example, greed, theft, cunning, vanity, and irascibility. The second part is a somewhat patronising defense...
£375
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PINDAR.
Carmina, ex editione Chr. Gottl. Heyne.
Oxford, N. Bliss for M. Bliss and R. Bliss [– and London, for F. & C. Rivington, J. Payne & J. Mackinlay, W.H. Lunn, Longman, Hurst,...
An attractive Oxford-printed pocket edition of Pindar’s Odes, as edited by Christian Gottlob Heyne.
£175