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  1. [BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER.]

    La Liturgie. C’est a dire, le formulaire des Prieres publiques, de l’Administrations des Sacreman;...

    A Londres, pour Jean Dunmore & Octavien Pulleyn le Jeune … 1667.

    First edition of this translation, printed for the use of ‘toutes les Eglisses Paroissiales & dans les Chapelles de Isles de Jersey, Guernsey, & autres Isles adjacentes’, as well as for the French congregation at the Savoy in London.

    £750

  2. FORDYCE, James.

    Addresses to young Men … The second Edition.

    London: Printed for T. Cadell … 1777.

    Second edition, uncommon, of Fordyce’s popular conduct book for young men. The work was published a sequel to his Sermons to young Women (1766), a work probably best known for its censure by Mary Wollstonecraft and its pointed appearance in the hands of Mr Collins in Pride & Prejudice....

    £200

  3. LINDBERGH, Anne Morrow.

    Listen! The Wind ... With Foreword and Map Drawings by Charles A. Lindbergh.

    New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1938.

    First edition of an award-winning book. Anne Morrow Lindbergh (1906-2001) met the celebrated American aviator Charles Lindbergh in 1927, when her father Dwight Morrow, the American ambassador to Mexico, invited Lindbergh to visit the country. They married in 1929, she soon learnt to fly under...

    £400

  4. SWIFT, Jonathan (attr.).

    The Life and genuine Character of Doctor Swift. Written by Himself.

    London: Printed for J. Roberts … and sold at the Pamphlet Shops … 1733.

    First edition. Authorship of this fine poem has long been debated. It was explicitly repudiated by Swift himself, though it has much in common with Verses on the Death of Doctor Swift and Faulkner printed it as genuine in 1746.

    £1000

  5. [SWIFT, Jonathan.]

    On Poetry: a Rapsody.

    Printed at Dublin, and Re-printed at London: and sold by J. Huggonson ... and at the Booksellers and Pamphlet-shops ... 1733.

    First edition. On Poetry, one of Swift’s most important productions in verse, was early recognized as a masterpiece and would have achieved considerable favour for Swift at court had not Lord Hervey ‘undeceived Q[ueen] C[aroline] and taken some pains to teach her the use and power of...

    £750

  6. GOLDSMITH, Oliver.

    Essays … Collecta revirescunt.

    London: Printed for W. Griffin … 1765.

    First edition, a collection of twenty-seven essays. The other edition of 1765, more cheaply printed and with a letterpress title-page, is given priority by Temple Scott, but Rothschild suggests it is a piracy or a cheap edition printed to meet extra demand – it is certainly less generously imposed,...

    £500

  7. ETHEREGE, George.

    The comical Revenge, or Love in a Tub. Acted at his Highness the Duke of York’s Theatre in Lincolns-Inn-Fields ...

    London, Printed for Henry Herringman ... 1669.

    Fourth edition of Etherege’s first play, preceded by two editions of 1664 and one of 1667; this is the scarcer of two printings for Herringman in 1669, with ‘fields’ rather than ‘Fields’ in the title, and the catchword ‘hope’ not ‘the’ on A2r.

    £500

  8. WALTON, Izaak.

    The Life of Dr. Sanderson, late Bishop of Lincoln ... to which is added, some short Tracts or Cases of Conscience,...

    London, Printed for Richard Marriott. 1678.

    First edition, the last of Walton’s five celebrated Lives.

    £400

  9. SWIFT, Jonathan.

    The Works … accurately revised in twelve Volumes, adorned with Copper-Plates; with some Account of the Author’s...

    London, Printed for C. Bathurst, C. Davis, C. Hitch and L. Lawes, J. Hodges, R. and J. Dodsley, and W. Bowyer. 1755. [Vols. II-IX: 1754].

    The large octavo first Hawkesworth edition of Swift’s works, which preceded the quarto edition of 1755, complete in twelve volumes but later expanded to twenty-five by 1779 with the addition of Letters etc. This was one of the two most important eighteenth-century editions of Swift, published in competition...

    £750

  10. WALLER, Edmund. 

    Poems, &c. written by Mr. Ed. Waller … and printed by a Copy of his own Hand-Writing.  All the lyrick Poems...

    London, Printed by I. N. for Hu. Mosley … 1645. 

    Second (but first licensed) edition of Waller’s first and most important collection, published while he was in exile, and shortly preceded by an unlicensed volume, Workes (London, Thomas Walkley, 1645) (Wing W 495) – ‘an adulterate Copy, surreptitiously and illegally imprinted, to...

    £850

  11. [JOHNSON, Samuel].

    The Prince of Abissinia. A Tale. In two Volumes …

    London: Printed for R. and J. Dodsley … and W. Johnston … 1759.

    First edition of Johnson’s only novel, written in the evenings of a single week to pay for his mother’s funeral. Its rapid execution is said to have been due to the fact that he had been pondering its chief topics all his life. It soon became his most popular work. Although now inevitably called...

    £1600

  12. [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

  13. 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

  14. COLERIDGE, S[amuel] T[aylor].

    The Watchman. No. I [III, IV]. Tuesday, March 1 [17, 25], 1796. Published by the Author …

    Bristol: and sold by the Booksellers and Newscarriers in Town and Country.

    Three (of ten) issues of The Watchman, Coleridge’s first journalistic endeavour, very rare: published in March to May 1796.

    £750

  15. JOHNSON, Samuel.

    Letters to and from the late Samuel Johnson, LL.D. To which are added some Poems never before printed. Published...

    … London: Printed for A. Strahan; and T. Cadell … 1788.

    First edition. Mrs Piozzi, when she was Mrs Thrale, was Johnson’s principal correspondent for a decade; her edition of Johnson’s letters is the ‘first publication and canonization of a large body of his correspondence’ (Oxford DNB). The Letters sold well, notwithstanding some complaints of manipulative...

    £650

  16. [SMOLLETT, Tobias].

    The Adventures of Roderick Random … in two Volumes … The second Edition.

    London: Printed for J. Osborn … 1748.

    Second edition, with ‘major imaginative changes’, and frontispieces which appear here for the first time. Even though there were only a few weeks between the first and second editions, Smollett found time to make a number of significant corrections in the text, on average about one substantive change...

    £500

  17. 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

  18. PRIOR, Matthew.

    Poems on several Occasions.

    London: Printed for Jacob Tonson … 1709.

    First authorised edition, preceded by Curll’s pirated collection of 1707. In the preface Prior complains that in Curll’s edition poems by other authors have been misattributed to him and that some of his own poems are ‘transcribed … so imperfectly, that I hardly knew them to be mine’....

    £400

  19. POEMS ON AFFAIRS OF STATE:

    from the Time of Oliver Cromwell, to the Abdication of K. James the Second. Written by the greatest...

    Printed in the Year 1702

    Fourth edition of this popular collection of witty verse and political satire, with the second edition of State-Poems continued (1697). Much of the poetry collected here was initially circulated in manuscript because of its political subject matter (which includes the Dutch wars, the Popish Plot, and...

    £425

  20. HALIFAX, George Savile, Marquis of.

    Miscellanies … viz. I. Advice to a Daughter. II. The Character of a Trimmer. III. The Anatomy...

    London: Printed for Matt. Gillyflower … 1700.

    First edition, the issue without the two rows of ornaments to the title-page, and with Q4-R3 uncancelled. Defoe’s Letter to a Dissenter (first published 1688) rather than Halifax’s was printed in error on leaves Q4-R3, and these leaves are cancelled in later issues (in the present copy Q4 is torn...

    £450