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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[BUNBURY, Henry William.] ‘GAMBADO, Geoffrey’.
Annals of Horsemanship, containing Accounts of accidental Experiments and experimental...
London, W. Nicholson for W. Baynes, 1808.
Third edition of Bunbury’s satirical work with humorous etchings. First published in 1791 and often presented as a continuation of Bunbury’s Academy for grown Horsemen (published in 1784 also under the name Gambado), the Annals of Horsemanship is a parody of Arthur Young’s...
£475
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BUQUOY, Georg Franz August de Longueval, Freiherr von Vaux, Graf von.
Anregungen für philosophisch-wissenschaftliche Forschung...
Leipzig, Breitkopf & Härtel, 1825.
First edition, rare, of a comprehensive discussion by the author of his personal philosophy, with c. 50 pages of his poetry thrown in at the end for good measure. Samuel Hahnemann refers to the work in Die chronischen Krankheiten (1828–30), calling Buquoy a ‘deep-thinking, many-sided scholar and...
£950
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LEWIS, Wyndham.
An Anthology of his Prose. Edited with an introduction by E.W.F. Tomlin.
London, Methuen & Co Ltd., [1969].
First edition. ‘The Sea-Mists of Winter’, Lewis’s famous article on the approach of blindness, appears in this Anthology for the first time in book form – the original article from The Listener is also laid in. Bridson has noted in pencil where the book text differs (with several...
£150
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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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BRADLEY Gertrude M., illustrator.
An archive of drawings for Just Forty Winks.
[c. 1897].
Fifty-eight delightful preliminary pencil sketches by the illustrator Gertrude M. Bradley for Just Forty Winks, Hendry’s tale for children, offered with a copy of the first and only edition, rare in the dustjacket.
£850
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GALLICO, Paul.
An archive of thirty-four scrapbooks compiled by Gallico.
1928–1972.
A lovingly and meticulously compiled archive of the writing career of the novelist Paul Gallico. The scrapbooks are arranged chronologically and by book/film with letters, telegrams, publicity materials, photographs and ephemera neatly intermingled with copies of reviews and reactions from local,...
£5500
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VALERIUS FLACCUS, Gaius, and Louis CARRIO, translator.
Argonauticon … libri VIII, a Ludovico Carrione Brugensi...
Antwerp, Christopher Plantin, [15 July] 1565.
First edition, a very attractive copy, of Louis Carrio’s precocious – and perhaps overconfident – recension of the first-century Argonautica of Valerius Flaccus.
£1250
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ARISTOTLE.
Αριστοτελους περι ποιητικης: Aristotelis de poetica liber ex versione Theodori Goulstoni. Lectionis...
Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1780.
Large-paper issue of the first Winstanley edition, handsomely bound. The first work published by the Oxford historian and classicist Thomas Winstanley (1749–1823), subsequently Camden Professor of History and Laudian Professor of Arabic, this edition of Aristotle’s De poetica was based...
£675
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THORNBURY, George Walter.
Art and Nature at Home and Abroad …
London: Hurst and Blackett, Publishers, Successors to Henry Colburn … 1856.
First edition: an early collection of essays by Thornbury (1828-1876), a prolific (and famously cacographic) writer who is closely associated with Dickens for his work on Household Words and All the Year Round (‘one of Charles Dickens’s most valuable contributors’; Dickens, Letters,...
£450
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GARDINER, John Smallman.
The Art and the Pleasures of Hare-Hunting. In six Letters to a Person of Quality …
London: Printed by R. Griffith … 1750.
First edition, scarce, of this eloquent and amusing account of hare-hunting, the first monograph on the subject in English, comprising letters on the superiority of hare-hunting to fox-hunting (less dangerous, less laborious), on the best types of dogs, of trailing and starting hares, &c. Gardiner’s...
£1250
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BERNIER DE MALIGNY, Aristippe-Félix.
Art du comédien. Principes généraux. Recueillis et mis en ordre par Aristippe, 1819.
Paris, Louis Raymond, [1819].
Very rare broadside encapsulating the ‘art of the actor’, by the thespian and theoretician Aristippe-Félix Bernier de Maligny, who would later develop his ideas further in his 1826 book Théorie de l’art du comédien.
£875
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SEMMLER, Clement.
The Art of Brian James and other Essays on Australian Literature …
[St Lucia,] University of Queensland Press, [1972].
First edition, inscribed ‘For Joyce & Geoffrey – a memento of your welcome visit again to Sydney / Clem / Jan. 1973’.
£75
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[CUMBERLAND, Richard.]
Arundel. By the author of the Observer.
London, Printed for C. Dilly … 1789.
First edition. Richard Cumberland (1732–1811) was the grandson of the great scholar Richard Bentley, and great-grandson of the Bishop of Peterborough; he had already made his name as a playwright in London, and was also the author of a periodical paper the Observer when he published this,...
£1500
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[DELAMARCHE, Alexandre, cartographer; Bernard COUDERT, lithographer.]
‘Atlas’.
Paris, Legay, [c. 1889].
An attractive set of large educational jigsaw maps showing the world, Europe, and France, preserved in its original allegorical box.
£875
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ARMINESI, Rocco degli.
Attila flagelum Dei, tradotto dalla vera cronica per Rocco degli Arminesi padovano. Ove si narra come detto...
Venice, Omobon Bettanino, [mid-eighteenth century].
Very rare eighteenth-century edition of a popular and best-selling poem on Attila the Hun.
£600
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REXROTH, Kenneth.
An Autobiographical Novel …
Garden City, NY, Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1966.
First edition, inscribed ‘In friendship / for Geoffrey Bridson / Kenneth Rexroth SF June 66’.
£300
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CAMPBELL, Thomas.
Autograph letter, signed, to the novelist and socialite Lady Morgan, explaining why he cannot join her party.
‘Wednesday Morning’, no date, but late 1840.
‘I have been dying also several times during the last six months – I hope however to survive a few weeks when I shall be nearer to you when, in my new house in Victoria Square, I shall hope to see you frequently.’ Campbell suffered increasing ill health towards the end of his life, but continued...
£175
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SCRIBE, Augustin-Eugène.
Autograph letter, signed, to an unnamed recipient.
Paris, 21 January, [1840, 1845, or 1851].
The dramatist Augustin-Eugène Scribe (1791–1861) thanks the unnamed recipient for his invitation but politely regrets that he is unable to attend. He explains that he had fully intended to come and had already arranged with ‘Monsieur Pichot’ to go together with him. However, Scribe’s wife had...
£200
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BROWN, Arthur Henry.
Autograph manuscript notebook mainly of Christmas carols.
[Brentwood?, 1864–87].
An autograph manuscript notebook composed primarily of Christmas carols, compiled carefully over some twenty-five years from various sources including manuscripts in the British Museum, early printed books, and contemporary books and periodicals.
£450
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[LE GUERCHOIS, Madeleine d’Aguesseau, Madame.]
Avis d’une mere a son fils.
Paris, Desaint & Saillant, 1743.
A popular work of matrimonial advice, in a simple vellum binding richly decorated by the master calligrapher Francois Nicolas Bédigis (1738–1814).
£2750