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English Literature

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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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  1. SCHILLER, Friedrich.

    Wallenstein ein dramatisches Gedicht …

    Tübingen, J. G. Cotta, 1800.

    First edition of Schiller’s dramatic Wallenstein trilogy, tracing the rise and fall of the Bohemian general Albrecht von Wallenstein during the Thirty Years’ War, from the von Carlowitz library and perhaps associated with the play’s French translator, Baroness Aloïse-Christine de Carlowitz....

    £800

  2. SCOTT, Sir Walter.

    The Vision of Don Roderick; a Poem ... Edinburgh: Printed by James Ballantyne and Co. for John Ballantyne ...

    Edinburgh, and Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, London, 1811

    First trade edition, third impression (correcting the pagination), preceded by a private edition described as ‘Author’s Copy’ on the title-page.

    £450

  3. SCOTT, Sir Walter.

    The Lady of the Lake … with all his Introductions and Notes, various Readings, and the Editor’s Notes.

    Edinburgh, Robert Cadell, 1851.

    An attractive Scottish 'Mauchline ware' tartan binding. Mauchline ware bindings – the name comes from Smith’s boxware factory at Mauchline in Ayrshire – were made from thin wooden boards (often sycamore) decorated with tartan or pictorial designs, heavily varnished, and attached to the text...

    £750

  4. [SCOTT, Walter, Sir.]

    Ivanhoe; A Romance. By “The Author of Waverley,” &c. … In three Volumes … Second Edition.

    Edinburgh, [James Ballantyne & Co.] for Archibald Constable & Co., and London, Hurst, Robinson, & Co., 1820.

    Stated second edition but in fact a third issue of the first, published on 15 January; the first issue, published on 20 December the previous year, is similarly dated 1820.

    £375

  5. 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

  6. 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

  7. [SHAFTESBURY, Anthony Ashley [Cooper], third Earl of].

    Several Letters written by a noble Lord to a young Man at the University …

    London: Printed for J. Roberts … 1716.

    First edition, posthumously published. The ten letters here were written by Shaftesbury to a protégé, Michael Ainsworth, whilst at Oxford (1707-1710). Shaftesbury’s own teacher, John Locke, features in a number of them, receiving from his erstwhile pupil both praise (‘No one has done more towards...

    £350

  8. SHAKESPEARE, William, and Bolemir IZBORSKÝ, pseud. [i.e. Antonín MAREK], translator.

    Omylowé dle Shakespeara...

    Prague, Jozefa Fetterlowá, ‘in the Archbishop’s Printing House at the Seminary’, 1823.

    First edition in Czech, very rare, of A Comedy of Errors, freely translated by Antonín Marek (1785–1877), one of the earliest appearances of Shakespeare in the language, preceded only by a very rare translation of Macbeth by Karel Ignác Thám (Makbet, 1786), which was staged...

    £1100

  9. SHAKESPEARE, William, and Boris Leonidovich PASTERNAK, translator.

    Otello, venetsianskii mavr. Perevod s angliiskogo...

    Moscow, Ogiz, 1945.

    First edition of Pasternak’s translation. ‘Pasternak was attached to Shakespeare for all his creative life. In his best early verse collection My Sister Life (pub. 1922), the poem “English Lessons” featured Desdemona and Ophelia “letting their passions slip from their shoulders...

    £1000

  10. SHAKESPEARE, William, and Mihály VÖRÖSMARTY, translator. 

    Lear Király … 

    Pest, Landerer & Heckenastn, 1856. 

    First edition of the first translation of King Lear into Hungarian by Mihály Vörösmarty, commissioned by the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and carried out as part of a joint effort between three of Hungary’s most renowned poets. 

    £950

  11. SHAKESPEARE, William; Richard Grant WHITE, editor.

    The Works of William Shakespeare. The Plays edited from the Folio of...

    Boston, Little Brown & Company, 1893.

    An attractive Boston-printed edition of the complete works of Shakespeare, edited by the prominent American Shakespearean scholar Richard Grant White (1922–1885).

    £500

  12. SHAW, Eyre Massey, Capt.

    Report … to the Right Hon. the Secretary of State of the Home Department concerning the Fire which occurred...

    London: Printed for Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, by Eyre and Spottiswoode … 1888.

    First edition of Shaw’s account of the disastrous fire at the Theatre Royal, Exeter, in 1887.

    £150

  13. [SHEFFIELD, John, Earl of Mulgrave, afterwards Duke of Buckingham.]

    An Essay on Poetry.

    London, Printed for Joseph Hindmarsh … 1682.

    First edition, a verse satire in imitation of Horace’s Ars Poetica. There are indirect attacks on Rochester (‘Bawdry barefac’d, that poor pretence to Wit’), and Cowley, who has poetic fury but ‘ill expression’, while Sheffield reserves praise for Dryden, who took the blame for...

    £1200

  14. SHENSTONE, William.

    The Works, in Verse and Prose… in three Volumes … Fifth Edition …

    London: Printed for J. Dodsley … 1777.

    Fifth edition of the Works (1764), the first edition of which was planned by Shenstone but published after his death, with Robert Dodsley’s description of Shenstone’s important garden at The Leasowes, one of the first natural landscape gardens in England and one of the most influential,...

    £325

  15. [SHEPHEARD, James.]

    The Dying Speech of James Shepheard: who suffer’d Death at Tyburn, March the 17th, 1717/18. Deliver’d by...

    [London, s.n., 1718.]

    One of at least five printings of this ‘speech’ – allegedly written by the young Jacobite James Shepheard, hanged at Tyburn for planning the assassination of George I – some adding a hymn. Its inflammatory content makes it very unlikely that it was in fact delivered.

    £750

  16. SHERBURNE, Edward, Sir. 

    Salmacis, Lyrian & Sylvia, Forsaken Lydia, the Rape of Helen, a Comment thereon, with severall...

    London, W. Hunt, for Thomas Dring, 1651. 

    First edition of a charming book of Caroline poetry, original and translated, in a most sympathetic and well-preserved collector’s binding.  This is the first issue; it was reissued in the same year under the title Poems and Translations, amorous, lusory, morall, divine, reflecting the...

    £4250

  17. SHERIDAN, Richard Brinsley.

    The Speech … in the House of Commons, (8th December 1802) on the Motion for the Army Establ shment...

    London: Printed for John Stockdale … 1802

    First edition of Sheridan’s impressive speech on the army estimates, in support of funding precautions against Buonaparte’s aggression – ‘the crisis in which we are placed … so big with tremendous importance, so pregnant with mighty difficulties, so full of apprehensions and dangers ….’...

    £75

  18. SHERIDAN, Richard Brinsley. 

    The School for Scandal, a Comedy [– The Critic …; – The Rivals …; – A Trip to Scarborough...

    Dublin, William Porter for William Jones, 1792 [– 1793]. 

    The first attempt to publish a collected edition of Sheridan’s dramatic works, forming the fifth volume of The British Theatre, an assembly of pirated plays by the Dublin bookseller William Jones. 

    £275

  19. [SHERIDAN, Richard Brinsley.]

    The School for Scandal. A Comedy. As it is acted at the Theatre, Smoke-Alley, Dublin.

    [Dublin], Printed for the Booksellers, 1793.

    First separate illustrated edition of Sheridan’s highly popular The School for Scandal, which has ‘amused audiences from [its] early, immensely successful performances up to the present day, for Sheridan is one of the great comic writers in English’ (ODNB).

    £750

  20. [SHIDYĀQ, Ahmad Fāris, attributed author.]

    Kitāb al-muhāwarah al-unsīyah fī al-lughatayn al-Inklīzīyah wa-al-ʿArabīyah...

    [Malta, 1840].

    First edition, an English grammar and vocabulary designed for Arabic students, attributed to the Lebanese-born Shidyāq, who lived between Cairo and Malta in the 1820s–40s, and is best known for his well-regarded Arabic translation of the Bible (1857), and for his less well-regarded opinion...

    £950