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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[GREENE, Asa.]
The Perils of Pearl Street, including a taste of the dangers of Wall Street, by a late merchant.
New York, Betts & Anstice and Peter Hill, 1834.
First edition of a very early Wall Street novella, the fictional tale of Billy Hazard, an innocent carpenter’s son from rural New York state determined to make it as a merchant in the city. Billy’s attempts to establish himself in the mercantile trade in New York City are ultimately unsuccessful...
£2750
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HART, Francis Russell.
Admirals of the Caribbean … with Illustrations.
Boston and New York, Houghton Mifflin, 1922.
No. 170 of 200 copies of the special edition, printed by the Riverside Press in Cambridge, Mass., on Umbria hand-made paper. This copy was presented to Marion Alice Bateman-Hanbury, Baroness Bateman, by the author: ‘You have done many kind things for the author of this book. Will you do one more and...
£300
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HEMINGWAY, Ernest.
A Farewell to Arms.
New York, Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1929.
First edition, first printing, without the disclaimer on p. [x] and with the Scribner’s seal on the copyright page. A Farewell to Arms, ‘the premier American war novel’ (Reynolds), was derived from Hemingway’s own experience on the Italian campaign in WWI, and was his first best-seller.
£1250
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HEMINGWAY, Ernest.
To Have and have not.
New York, Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1937.
First edition, first printing. To Have and Have Not was Hemingway’s first long novel since A Farewell to Arms (1929), and its politics were much influenced by Republican Spain, to which Hemingway was still frequently travelling. Set in Key West, the ‘paradise of the “haves” and...
£1750
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HOLCROFT, Thomas.
The Family Picture; or, domestic Dialogues on amiable and interesting Subjects: illustrated by Histories, Allegories,...
London, printed for Lockyer Davis … printer to the Royal Society, 1783.
First edition of an early work by the radical playwright, translator, and novelist Thomas Holcroft, a series of dialogues by members of the fictional Egerton family, who gather in their library every evening to tell stories for their mutual instruction and amusement.
£950
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HUISH, Robert.
Fatherless Rosa; or, the Dangers of the Female Life. Expressly written as a Companion to Fatherless Fanny …
London, Published by T. Kaygill … for William Emans …, 1820.
First edition. Like the best-selling Fatherless Fanny (1811, possibly by Clara Reeve), Fatherless Rosa, set in the middle of the eighteenth century, pleads ‘the cause of virtue and morality’, but with characters exhibiting ‘a greater degree of vice’ than Fanny, the little mendicant,...
£750
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INCHBALD, Mrs. [Elizabeth].
Nature and Art.
London, G. G. and J. Robinson, 1796.
First edition of a powerful and tragic Jacobin novel, ‘remarkable for its dramatic rendering of the feminist point that men destroy women’s chastity and then mete out punishment for its loss’ (Spencer, The Rise of the Woman Novelist, 1986). It is a fearless interrogation of hypocrisy, greed,...
£3250
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ISHERWOOD, Christopher.
Berlin Stories.
New York: New Directions, [1945].
First American edition to combine the two Berlin novels, originally published by the Hogarth Press as Mr Norris Changes Trains and Goodbye to Berlin, in 1935 and 1939 respectively.
£150
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JACOMB, Charles Ernest.
And a New Earth. A Romance.
London, George Routledge & Sons, 1926.
First edition of this post-apocalyptic fantasy novel relating the history of a utopian island that survived a ‘second flood’ in 1958, which destroyed the world’s civilization and reduced the human population to just ten thousand.
£75
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JEFFERIES, Richard.
Hodge and his Masters …
London, Smith, Elder, & Co. … 1880.
First edition, an influential volume of sketches of rural life, collected from Jefferies’ articles in the Wiltshire and Gloucestershire Standard. Jefferies (1848-1887) had published his first novel The Scarlet Shawl in 1874, after some years as a rural newspaperman; with Hodge and his Masters...
£450
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JENKINS, Edward.
The Devil’s Chain … Twenty-sixth Thousand. With twelve Illustrations by Barnard and Thomson.
William Mullan & Son … London … Belfast, 1877.
25th Thousand, according to the binding, but ‘Twenty-sixth Thousand’ on the title-page.
£100
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JENKINS, Edward.
The Devil’s Chain … Twentieth Thousand. With twelve Illustrations by Barnard and Thomson.
[Southwark, M’Corquodale and Co. for] London and Belfast, William Mullan & Son, 1877.
A reissue of the illustrated edition, from a different publishing house, of this lively narrative tracing the ‘universally ruinous effect of drink on all classes of the English population’ (Sutherland) by Member of Parliament, anti-slavery campaigner, and ardent imperialist Edward Jenkins.
£100
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[JOHNSON, Samuel].
Rasselas.
London: J. Bretell for Hector McLean, 1819.
Third Smirke edition, ordinary-paper issue. ‘All travel has its advantages,’ the lexicographer, essayist and critic Samuel Johnson (1709-84) wrote in his Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland. ‘If the passenger visits better countries, he may learn to improve his own, and if fortune...
£300
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[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
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[JOHNSON, Samuel.]
The Prince of Abissinia. A Tale …
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.
£4500
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[JUVENILE.]
The Weasel Family.
London, Edinburgh, and New York, T. Nelson and Sons, [1860s?]
First edition, rare, of a rather charming Victorian picture-book, from ‘The Funny Animal Series’, later collected in Comical Creatures: a Picture Book for the Nursery (1867).
£375
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[JUVENILE.] DAY, Thomas.
The History of Sandford and Merton, abridged from the Original. Embellished with elegant Plates … Third...
London:
Third edition of Richard Johnson’s abridgement of Day’s most famous and most enduring children’s book (1783, with sequels in 1786 and 1789), first published in this form in 1790. ESTC shows three copies of the first edition; five of the second; and BL and UCLA only of this third; Roscoe adds a...
£200
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KAVAN, Anna; Karl Theodor BLUTH.
The Horse’s Tale.
London, Gaberbocchus Press, [1949].
Uncommon first edition of this novel authored jointly by Kavan and her psychiatrist and friend Karl Theodor Bluth, written from the perspective of an ex-circus horse trying to find a place in postwar society and artistic circles, a criticism of prevailing trends in 1940s psychiatric treatment.
£850
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KIPLING, Rudyard.
The Horse Marines.
Garden City New York, Doubleday, Page & Company, Inc., 1910.
This story is based on a fictitious parliamentary report that army recruits were being trained to ride horses using rocking horses. It is the sixth instalment of the Pyecroft series.
£85
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KOTZEBUE, August Friedrich Ferdinand von.
The Guardian Angel. From the German … A Story for Youth.
London, J. Wright for Vernor and Hood, and J. Harris, 1802.
First edition in English (and the first separate edition in any language?) of Kotzebue’s novella ‘Der Schutzgeist’.
£800