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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REFUGE, Eustace de; Girolamo CANINI, translator.
Trattato della corte del Signor Refuge. Tradotto di Francese in questo...
Venice, Giovanni Battista Ciotti, 1621.
Rare first edition in Italian of this treatise on courtly behaviour attributed to the French statesman Eustache de Refuge (1564–1617), a seventeenth-century bestseller combining Machiavelli with Castiglione, with folding letterpress flowcharts by the translator, Giuseppe Canini, who had also produced...
£1850
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REMARKS ON FOG’S JOURNAL,
of February 10. 1752/3. Exciting the People to an Assassination.
London: Printed for J. Wilford …1733
First edition. In order to reduce the burden of the land tax on the country gentlemen upon whom his ministry depended, and to shift government revenues to other sources, Walpole revived the excise on salt and was considering substituting excise for customs duties on wine and tobacco. This led to alarms...
£150
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[RENNEVILLE, Sophie de (?).]
Contes a Aglaé, ou la jeune moraliste.
Paris, Caillou, c.1820.
Very uncommon edition, possibly the first, of this collection of educational contes moraux, sometimes attributed to the prolific children’s author and journalist Sophie de Renneville (1772–1822).
£325
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RENOWNED HISTORY (The)
of Primrose Prettyface, who by her Sweetness of Temper, & Love of Learning, was raised from being the Daughter...
London, Printed & sold by J. Marshall & Co. … (Price 6d in Gilt Paper – 9d bound in Red.) [1788?]
One of three undated editions, probably the last (adding Marshall’s Cheapside premises at 17 Queen St to the imprint), but the only one with an engraved title-page and frontispiece.
£1000
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RE-REPRESENTATION (THE)
: or, a modest Search after the great Plunderers of the Nation: being a brief Enquiry into two weighty...
London, Printed in the Year, 1711.
First edition, the issue with ‘known. I.’ (rather than ‘known, viz. I.’) on the title-page, and with ‘against’ and ‘publick’ spelled correctly on pages 11 and 25. As the half-title and title-page form a bifolium cancelling A1 (the text begins on A2, page 3), the two variants were probably...
£350
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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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[REYNOLDS, Joshua, Sir].
A Discourse, delivered at the Opening of the Royal Academy, January 2, 1769 [also: October 16,...
London: Printed in the Year 1769.
First editions of seven discourses addressed by Reynolds to the newly founded Royal Academy, of which he was the first President.
£950
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[RICHARDSON, Jonathan.]
The general Address (in two Parts) of the Outinian Lecturer to his Auditors…
London, Printed by W. Nicol, late Bulmer & Co., 1822.
Rare first edition of a revised version of the valedictory lecture given by the Outinian Society on 31 December 1818 to mark the centenary of the death of William Penn (1644–1717), founder of the Pennsylvania Colony, drawing on information supplied by the Society’s founder, Penn’s grandson.
£1600
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RICHARDSON, Joseph.
The Fugitive: a Comedy. As it is performed at the King’s Theatre, Haymarket …
London: Printed for J. Debrett … 1792.
First edition of the first play by Sheridan’s friend, the writer and politican Joseph Richardson, proprietor of the Morning Post and later of the Drury Lane Theatre (by 1796 he had a £12,000 stake); this is the second issue, with sheets K-M reset to add extra dialogue to Act V, scene I.
£100
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[RICHMOND.]
The Belvidere: a Poem. Inscrib’d to Joseph Grove, Esq. of Richmond, in the County of Surrey …
London: Printed in the Year 1749.
First edition, rare (British Library and Yale only) of a very attractive description in verse of a country estate in Richmond. The first pages offer a prospect of the garden with its flowers and shrubs, shaded walks and arbours, a bower with the escutcheon over the door of the late Sir William...
£2750
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RITTERSHAUSEN, Nicolaus; William RADCLYFFE, annotator.
Genealogiae imperatorum, regum, ducum, comitum, praecipuorumque aliorum...
Tübingen, Johann Heinrich Reis for Johann Georg Cotta, 1664.
Third, expanded edition (first published 1658) of this rare and extensive work on the genealogies of the ruling and noble houses of Christendom, this copy owned and painstakingly augmented c. 1800 by the herald and alleged imposter William Radclyffe, whose controversial pedigree – which...
£3250
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[RIVERS, David].
Literary Memoirs of living Authors of Great Britain, arranged according to an alphabetical Catalogue of their...
London: Printed for R. Faulder … sold also by T. Egerton … and W. Richardson … 1798.
First edition of a collection of literary biographies, including perhaps the earliest brief life of Coleridge, whose first volume of Poems had appeared in 1796:
£1500
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R., N.
Proverbs English, French, Dutch, Italian and Spanish. All Englished and alphabetically digested …
London, Printed for Simon Miller … 1659.
First and only edition of a scarce collection of idiomatic phrases and proverbs, many translated from other languages, with a selection of 114 ‘Golden sentences’ at the end.
£1750
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ROGERS, Samuel.
Recollections of the Table-Talk of Samuel Rogers. To which is added Porsoniana.
London: Edward Moxon ... 1856.
First edition of this mine of contemporary literary gossip. Rogers is among that select group of poets to have declined the laureateship, and his poetry once had an ardent fan in Byron, who saw him as a much needed antidote to the Lake poets. His most durable achievement, however, has proved to be his...
£150
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ROSCOMMON, Wentworth Dillon, Earl of.
Poems … to which is added an Essay on Poetry, by the Earl of Mulgrave, now Duke of Buckingham....
London: Printed for J. Tonson … 1717.
First edition of this collection, notable for Richard Duke’s unfinished Review, a vehement satire in response to, and in the allegorical manner of, Absalom and Achitophel, and featuring Dryden as one of the figures satirised. According to Tonson in the preface, it was written ‘a little after the...
£400
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ROSCOMMON, Wentworth Dillon, Earl of.
An Essay on Translated Verse …
London, Printed for Jacob Tonson … 1684.
First edition of Roscommon’s influential Essay, in heroic couplets, which owes much to Boileau and to the author’s own education in France after the attainder of his kinsman the Earl of Strafford, with an introductory poem by Dryden.
£450
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ROTH, Henry.
Call it Sleep.
London: Michael Joseph, 1963.
First English edition, first published in New York by Robert O. Ballou in 1934.
£250
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[ROYAL PRUSSIAN SOCIETY OF SCIENCES.]
Miscellanea berolinensia ad incrementum scientiarum, ex scriptis societati regiae scientiarum...
Berlin, Johann Christoph Papen, 1723.
First continuation of Leibniz’s Miscellanea berolinensia. First appearing in 1710, the publication of the Miscellanea was revived in 1723 as the official journal of the Royal Prussian Society of Sciences after the death of Leibniz, its founding President. The Continuatio comprises...
£575
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RUFIANDER, Fabius Jocosus, pseud. [Friedrich Julius ROTTMANN].
Curiöse Inaugural Disputation von dem Recht / Natur /...
‘Teutschland, Gedruckt in denen Hundes-Tagen, 1716.’
First edition, very rare, of this satirical academic disputation on melancholy, dedicated to the author’s ‘unpleasant and universally despised’ peers in the hope of cheering them up (p. [4] trans.).
£675
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RUSKIN, John.
The stones of Venice … With illustration drawn by the author. Fourth edition.
Orpington, Kent, George Allen, 1886.
A deluxe copy, one of 220 copies, of the fourth expanded edition, printed on Van Gelder laid paper with the plates on India paper.
£375