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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HENNEQUIN, Pierre.
Nouveau cours de rhétorique, à l’usage de la jeunesse des deux sexes; dédié à sa Majesté l’Impératrice...
Moscow, Auguste Semen, 1818.
Only edition, very uncommon, of this guide to rhetoric by the Moscow-based French grammarian Pierre Hennequin (1772–1849), explicitly designed for both sexes and dedicated to the Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna (1759–1828).
£950
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JOHNSON, Samuel.
A Dictionary of the English Language: in which the Words are deduced from their Originals, and illustrated in...
London, W. Strahan for J. and P. Knapton, T. and T. Longman, C. Hitch and L. Hawes, A. Millar, and R. and J. Dodsley, 1755.
First edition of ‘the most amazing, enduring and endearing one-man feat in the field of lexicography’ (PMM), this copy preserving 19D and 24O both in the first state.
£15000
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[LEXICON.] [ALENIUS, Arnoldus, i.e. Arnout van EYNDHOUTS.]
Lexicon Graecolatinum post omnes hactenus editiones maxima iam...
Venice, Alessandro Brucioli and brothers [i.e. Antonio and Francesco Brucioli], 1546.
First edition of the Lexicon edited by the Dutch humanist and poet Arnout van Eyndhouts, or Arnoud de Lens, known as Arnoldus Alenius. Alenius’s formation took place in Paris, then Ferrara and Bologna. His proficiency as a Greek scholar earned him the post of librarian to the Spanish ambassador in...
£2000
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MÜNSTER, Sebastian.
מלאכת הדיקדוק [Melechet ha-Dikduk]. Institutiones grammaticae in Hebraeam linguam FR Sebastiani...
[Basel,] Johann Froben, 1524.
First edition of Sebastian Münster’s important Hebrew grammar for students, bound with the first Latin edition of his translation of Elia Levita’s Composita verborum, both critical to the Christian scholarly reception of Hebrew grammatical works and here enhanced by extensive contemporary...
£6500
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OSTROGORSKII, Aleksandr Iakovlevich.
Zhivoe slovo. Kniga dlia izucheniia rodnogo iazyka [Living word. A book for learning our...
New York, Association Press, 1920.
Stereotype (first American?) edition. First published in 1907, Ostrogorsky’s (1868–1908) Zhivoe slovo was a runaway success in Russia, where it was widely regarded as the best reader of its type. Such high regard for the book presumably made it an obvious choice for it to be republished for the...
£150
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[PALIN, Nils Gustaf.]
De l’étude des hiéroglyphes. Fragmens. Tome premier [–cinquième].
Paris, Fain for Delaunay, Colnet, Treuttel, and Wurtz, 1812.
First edition of this curious work on Egyptian hieroglyphics by the Swedish diplomat and Sinologist Nils Gustaf Palin (1765–1842).
£2500
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PÉREZ DE HERRERA, Cristóbal.
Proverbios morales, y consejos christianos … Y enigmas philosoficas, naturales, y morales, con...
Adornadas con trece emblemas … Madrid, heirs of Francisco del Hierro, [1733].
Second edition, the Stirling Maxwell copy, of these 759 proverbs and 311 enigmas by Cristóbal Pérez de Herrera, social reformer, senior physician to Philip II of Spain, and ‘the prince of riddles’.
£1450
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[PROVERBS.]
Proverbs English, French, Dutch, Italian, and Spanish. All Englished and alphabetically digested. By N.R. Gent …
London, 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 ‘Wise speeches and golden sentences’ at the end.
£1200
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[RIVERS, David].
Literary Memoirs of living Authors of Great Britain, arranged according to an alphabetical Catalogue of their...
London, R. Faulder, T. Egerton, and W. Richardson, 1798.
First edition of a literary ‘Who’s Who’ for 1798, including perhaps the earliest brief life of Coleridge, whose first volume of Poems had appeared in 1796.
£1200
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[‘ROBERTI, Antonius’, pseud.]; George PERKINS, editor.
Clavis Homerica, reserans significationes, etymologias,...
London, E. Griffin for Godfrey Emerson, 1638.
First London edition, ‘with the Catholic particulars omitted’ (Allison & Rogers I, p. 130) from the overtly Jesuit Douai edition in 1636, of Roberti’s explanation of Homeric vocabulary and terminology, prefaced by a Greek grammar.
£600
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SAUSSURE, Ferdinand de.
Cours de linguistique générale.
Lausanne & Paris, Payot, 1916.
First edition of this seminal textbook on linguistics by Ferdinand de Saussure, fundamental to the development of structuralism and semiotics, introducing distinctions between signified and signifier as well as language systems and speech.
£575
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[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 that Shakespeare...
£950
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[SINO-VIETNAMESE.]
‘朱柏盧家訓 Instructions familières du Dr Tchou-Pou-Lou’.
[Vietnam?, late nineteenth century.]
A set of manuscript lessons and exercises in classical Chinese, partly unique and likely compiled by Frenchmen in late nineteenth-century Vietnam.
£3500
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URCEO, Antonio.
Hoc Codri volumine haec continentur. Orationes, seu sermones ut ipse appellabat. Epistolae. Silvae. Satyrae. Eglogae....
Bologna, Giovanni Antonio Benedetti, 7 March 1502.
First edition of a quintessential piece of Italian humanism, annotated by a sixteenth-century reader particularly interested in the philology of the texts.
£3000
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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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VENERONI, Giovanni.
The Complete Italian Master; containing the best and easiest Rules for attaining that Language … Newly...
London, J. Nourse, 1763.
First edition thus, revising an earlier translation of Le maitre italien of 1711, which was not only ‘out of print’ but ‘in many respects inaccurate’ (Preface). The translator’s preface acknowledges the work of foreign editors since the second edition of 1729 and describes some of...
£750
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VIGER, François.
De praecipuis graecae dictionis idiotismis … accessit praeterea huic editioni observationum non inutilium qualecunque...
London, G. Godbid for William Shrowsberey, 1678.
Second London edition of this treatise on Greek idiom by the French Jesuit François Viger (1590–1647).
£175
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[WALEY, Arthur.]
康熙字典 [Kangxi zidian; ‘The Kangxi Dictionary’].
Shanghai, Dianshizhai for Jiujingzhai, Guangxu 22 [1894].
Nineteenth-century Shanghai edition of the Kangxi Dictionary, this set with an autograph note from the great Sinologist and translator Arthur Waley identifying the text for a previous owner.
£1250
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WALKER, John.
Hints for Improvement in the Art of Reading ...
London, Printed for the Author, and sold by T. Cadell ... G. Robinson ... and T. Becket ..., 1783.
First edition. The future lexicographer John Walker (1732-1807) left grammar school and then absconded from an apprenticeship to join a succession of provincial theatre companies. Garrick hired him in 1754 and for the next four years he performed a number of mainly minor parts at Drury Lane. In 1758...
£650