English Literature
Contact Donovan Rees or Zach Larsen
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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[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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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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ROCHESTER, John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of, Wentworth Dillon ROSCOMMON, 4th Earl of, et al.
A Collection of Poems: viz....
London, printed for Daniel Brown and Benjamin Tooke, 1701.
Fourth edition of the important ‘Temple of Death’ miscellany of Restoration poetry, comprising some one hundred poems, retaining most of the poems from the third edition of 1693 and adding much new material, including the first appearances of works by Roscommon and Rochester.
£500
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ROHAN, Henri, Duke of; [Henry HUNT, translator].
A Treatise of the Interest of the Princes and States of Christendome....
London, Richard Hodgkinson, 1641.
First edition in England (and second in English) of this groundbreaking work on political interest and the balance of power by the leader of the Huguenots, this copy with hitherto unnoticed printing variants.
£1800
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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 UK edition of Roth’s precocious masterpiece, generally regarded as the finest novel of Jewish immigration to America before and after the turn of the century.
£250
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ROUGEMONT, François de; [Sebastião de MAGALHÃES, translator].
Relacam do estado politico e espiritual do imperio da China, pellos...
Lisbon, Joao da Costa, 1672.
Portuguese translation, the first appearance of the text, of the Dutch Jesuit François de Rougemont’s history of mid seventeenth-century China, published a year before the Latin original. Inspired to join the Chinese missions after meeting the famed Jesuit sinologist Martino Martini in Louvain,...
£2500
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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
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SALLUST.
Caii Sallustii Crispi quae extant.
London, James Tonson and John Watts, 1713.
First Maittaire edition. The French-born classical scholar Michel Maittaire (1668–1741) studied at Westminster, and then under Robert South at Christ Church, Oxford. He is best known for his Annales Typographici and the series of duodecimo classics that he published with Tonson and Watts...
£300
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‘SANCTA CLARA, Abraham a’, i.e. Johann Ulrich MEGERLE.
Coraggio e viltà, l’uno nella virtù, l’altra nel vizio....
Trento, Giovanni Parone, 1717.
Scarce first and only Italian edition of Abraham a Sancta Clara’s emblematic moral treatise Huy! und Pfuy! der Welt, printed in Trento with one hundred striking – albeit somewhat provincial – woodcuts after the engravings in the first German edition of 1707.
£2250
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SANDYS, George.
A Paraphrase upon the divine Poems …
London, At the Bell in St. Pauls Churchyard. 1638. [Colophon: London, Printed by John Legatt 1637.]
First edition, the issue with the Dedication to Charles I on the title-verso.
£900
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[SANDYS, John].
The Salopian Zealot: or, the good Vicar in a bad Mood. By John the Dipper …
Sold by G. Keith, and J. Buckland, in London;— T. Evans, Bristol; and by the Booksellers in Salop, Liverpool, &c. [1778].
First edition of a lively verse contribution to an increasingly acrimonious pamphlet war between Baptists.
£575
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[SARPI, Paolo (pseud.).] ‘Pietro Soave POLANO’.
Historia del Concilio Tridentino di Pietro Soave Polano. Seconda...
Geneva, Pierre Aubert, 1629.
Second edition, the first to omit the extraneous additions of the 1619 edition introduced by Marco Antonio de Dominis, of the influential and groundbreaking history of the Council of Trent by Paolo Sarpi (1552–1623), described by Milton as ‘the great unmasker’.
£450
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SASSOON, Siegfried.
Nativity.
London, Faber & Gwyer, 1927.
First edition of this striking collaboration between Siegfried Sassoon and Paul Nash.
£175