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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[DODSLEY, Robert, editor].
A Collection of Poems. By several Hands. In three Volumes.
London: Printed for R. Dodsley … 1748.
First edition, the most influential poetical miscellany of the eighteenth century. Dodsley’s avowed aim was ‘to preserve to the public those poetical performances, which seemed to merit a longer rememberance than what would probably be secured to them by the Manner wherein they were originally published’....
£450
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DONNE, John.
Devotions upon Emergent Occasions, and severall Steps in my Sicknes ...
London, Printed for Thomas Jones … 1627.
Third (and last lifetime) edition of Donne’s most familiar prose work, composed during his convalescence in 1623–4 from the ‘spotted Feaver’ which nearly killed him. It consists of twenty-three ‘Stationes, sive Periodi in Morbo’, each comprising a meditation, expostulation, and prayer.
£13500
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DONOUGHUE, A.
An Essay on the Passions: with other Poems … Shrewsbury: Printed by T. Wood … for P. Owen … Welshpool; sold...
Welshpool; sold by Champante and Whitrow … London, and all the Booksellers in Shrewsbury. 1799.
First edition. ‘I have felt as many woes as ever tore the bosom of a Petrarch’, writes the author in the Preface, ‘and have struggled with as many penurious calamities as ever agonized the soul of a Chatterton; will not then a generous public pardon my presumption, when informed, that I woke my...
£325
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[DOVES PRESS.]
Pervigilium Veneris.
Hammersmith, ‘printed by T.J. Cobden-Sanderson at the Doves Press,’ 1910.
One of 150 copies on paper of the elusive Pervigilium Veneris, a celebration of the spring festival of Venus Genetrix, here in the original Doves Bindery vellum, ‘a triumph of simplicity and restraint’ (Tidcombe).
£950
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DRYDEN, John.
Religio Laici or a Layman’s Faith. A Poem …
London, Printed for Jacob Tonson … 1683.
First edition, second issue (with a few minor corrections; Macdonald located only two copies of the first): ‘a defence of the Anglican position, which shows his singular power of arguing in verse’ (Leslie Stephen, DNB). The inspiration for the poem was the translation of Richard Simon’s Histoire...
£400
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[DRYDEN, John.]
The Medall. A Satyre against Sedition. By the Authour of Absalom and Achitophel …
London, Printed for Jacob Tonson … 1682.
First edition, second issue, adding two Latin lines at the end. The subject of Dryden’s satire was the medal struck to celebrate Shaftesbury’s acquittal from charges of high treason. According to Spence, Charles II gave Dryden ‘the hint for writing his poem’, and rewarded him for it. In...
£750
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DRYDEN, John.
Eleonora: a Panegyrical Poem: dedicated to the Memory of the late Countess of Abingdon …
London, Printed for Jacob Tonson … 1692.
First edition of Dryden’s eulogy for Eleanora, late Countess of Abingdon, commissioned by her husband, the first Earl of Abingdon.
£275
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DUNCAN, Raymond.
A small archive of printed and manuscript material relating to, and printed by, the dancer and poet Raymond Duncan.
Paris, 1940s to 1970s.
The present archive includes:
£1500
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[DUPONT DE NEMOURS, Pierre-Samuel, and Konrad Engelbert OELSNER.]
Notice sur la vie et les écrits de M. Joël Barlow, Ministre...
[Paris,] Smith [for the authors], 1813.
First edition, one of 500 copies, of this eulogy to the poet and diplomat Joel Barlow – a friend of Jefferson, Madison, Blake, and Paine – an association copy gifted by his widow, Ruth Barlow (née Baldwin) to the physicist and inventor Sir Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford, with her manuscript...
£500
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D’URFEY, Thomas.
The Progress of Honesty: or, a View of a Court and City. A Pindarique Poem …
London: Printed for Joseph Hindmarsh … 1681.
First edition of an allegorical poem inspired, like Dryden’s Absalom and Achitophel, by the Exclusion Crisis of 1681. ‘Honesty’ describes to ‘Error’, ‘Faction’ and ‘Beauty’ the court of Charles II (‘Titus the Second … the joy of human kind’), and the malign effects of Treason...
£300
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[D’URFEY, Thomas].
Butler’s Ghost: or Hudibras. The Fourth Part. With Reflections upon these Times …
London, Printed for Joseph Hindmarsh … 1682.
First edition of D’Urfey’s sequel to Samuel Butler’s burlesque poem Hudibras, the most celebrated satire of the seventeenth century, published in three parts in 1663-78. Written in hudibrastic metre, the two cantos of Butler’s Ghost follow the progress of Butler’s eponymous hero from an interrupted...
£325
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DURRELL, Lawrence.
Collected Poems.
London, Faber and Faber, [1960].
First edition, inscribed ‘For Geoff from Larry Durrell 1962 / “too much tape [?]” Eliot’.
£400
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DUTENS, Louis.
An Inquiry into the Origin of the Discoveries attributed to the Moderns: wherein it is demonstrated, that our most...
London: Printed for W. Griffin … 1769.
First edition in English of Recherches sur l’origine des découvertes attribuées aux modernes (Paris, 1766), an illuminating and voluminous study of how ‘in almost all truths of the greatest importance, the ancients preceded the moderns; or at least pointed out, or prepared the way, for their...
£300
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DYMENT, Clifford.
Poems 1935–1948.
London, J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd, [1949].
First edition, inscribed ‘For Geoffrey and Joyce, with best wishes plus, from Clifford Dyment and Marcella. October 1950’.
£200
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ECHARD, Laurence.
A general Ecclesiastical History from the Nativity of our Blessed Saviour to the first Establishment of Christianity...
London, W. Bowyer for Jacob Tonson, 1702.
First edition of Echard’s compendious history of the early Church, dedicated to Queen Anne. The work offers a concise and authoritative account compiled from a broad selection of authors, the preface noting: ‘that my Book might want nothing that cou’d be procur’d from others … I have...
£250
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EDE.
A Story. Three Volumes ...
London: Remington & Co. Publishers ... 1889.
First edition. Stifled by her boring life as the pampered daughter of a rich Midlands banker, Edith runs away to the neighbouring Potteries. She uses skills acquired as an accomplished young lady of leisure to get a job in the local porcelain factory as painter on china. She soon finds herself promoted...
£450
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ELIOT, George.
The Writings …
Boston and New York, Houghton Mifflin and Company, 1908.
The Large-Paper edition of Eliot’s complete works, no. 184 of 750 sets.
£2500
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ELLIOTT, Mary [née Belson].
Simple Truths, in Verse; for the Amusement and Instruction of Children at an early Age …
London: William Darton, sold also by Harvey and Darton … and John Harris … [c. 1825].
‘Fourth edition, corrected and revised’. Elliott was an extremely prolific author for Darton. These poems are settings of Anna Letitia Barbauld’s Hymns in Prose for Children (1791).
£200
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[ENGELBRECHT, Martin.]
[Vier Jahreszeiten. Serie 89.]
[Augsburg, Martin Engelbrecht, c. 1750.]
An attractive hand-coloured engraved peepshow showing the four seasons, with summer in the foreground retreating into winter behind, lined with printed waste from an illustrated Dutch religious broadside.
£1750
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ERASMUS, Desiderius.
Collectanea adagiorum.
[(Colophon:) Strasbourg, Matthias Schürer, 1519.]
Intensely annotated copy of a lifetime edition of Erasmus’ repository of Greek and Latin proverbs. The first version of the Adagia, containing about eight hundred maxims, had been published in 1500. Erasmus continued to add to his thesaurus for over thirty years, the success of this...
£5850