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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GISSING, George.
The Unclassed, A Novel … in three Volumes.
London, Chapman and Hall, 1884.
First edition of Gissing’s second novel – and Bernard Shaw’s favourite of his novels – in the single-volume remaindered issue in red cloth.
£950
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OHNET, Georges; Lady GODOLPHIN OSBORNE, translator.
The Battles of Life. The Ironmaster. From the French of Georges Ohnet...
Authorized Translation … London, Wyman & Sons … 1884.
First edition in English of this bestselling novel intended for a female readership, translated from the French by Lady William Godolphin Osborne, printed amidst the translator’s contentious copyright lawsuit against the publisher Henry Vizetelly, who had issued a rival translation in the same year.
£450
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MORRISON, Arthur.
Tales of Mean Streets. Lizerunt, Squire Napper, Without Visible Means, Three Rounds and Others …
Methuen & Co. … London, 1894.
First edition of Morrison’s second book. Born into a working-class family in Poplar, Morrison was first employed at the People’s Palace in Mile End, and then as a journalist for the evening Globe. His first book, The Shadows around Us (1891), comprised supernatural tales first printed...
£250
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MADDEN, Dodgson Hamilton.
The Diary of Master William Silence: A Study of Shakespeare & of Elizabethan Sport.
London, New York, & Bombay, Longmans, Green, & Co., 1897.
First edition of Madden’s reimagination of Elizabethan sport, derived from passages from Shakespeare. Though a legal writer and prominent jurist, being appointed attorney-general of Ireland in 1889, the best known publication of Dodgson Hamilton Madden (1840–1928) remains the Diary of Master William...
£120
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[SURTEES, Robert Smith,] and John LEECH (illustrator).
Handley Cross series.
London, Bradbury, Agnew, & Co., 1899-1900.
Limited ‘Master of Foxhounds’ edition, finely printed at the Whitefriars Press. Having published the first editions of several of Surtees’s sporting novels, Bradbury, Agnew, & Co. gathered and reprinted the six most successful as the ‘Handley Cross series’ as luxury sets. Publisher’s advertisements...
£1200
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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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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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LEWIS, Wyndham.
Tarr.
London, The Egoist Ltd., 1918.
First English edition, published in an edition of 1000 (of which 87 distributed gratis). T. S. Eliot thought the book ‘remarkable’. Set in pre-war Paris, Tarr pits its eponymous English artist (‘a caricatural self-portrait of sorts’) against Kreisler, a self-destructive German Romantic...
£300
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[JOYCE.] ROTH, Samuel [Edits.].
Two Worlds – A Literary Quarterly Devoted to the Increase of the Gaiety of Nations.
New York: Sign of the Mockigrisball, 1925.
First edition. Unnumbered, one of 500, of which 450 numbered copies were designated for subscribers. Between September 1925 and September 1926 Two Worlds published installments of Joyce’s ‘Work in Progress’ (Finnegan’s Wake), reprinted from European publications (in this case from Criterion,...
£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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LEWIS, Wyndham.
The Wild Body.
London, Chatto & Windus, 1927.
First trade edition, first issue binding; there was also a special edition of 85 signed copies. A collection, in a much reworked form, of some early sketches written in Brittany, some of which had been published in 1909.
£250
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MILNE, A. A.; E. H. SHEPARD, illustrator.
The House at Pooh Corner.
London, Methuen & Co., 1928.
First edition, first impression, of A. A. Milne’s classic final collection of tales about Winnie the Pooh and friends, and the first introduction of Tigger.
£650
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LEWIS, Wyndham.
The Childermass … Section 1.
London, Chatto & Windus, 1928.
First edition, no. 74 of 225 copies of the special edition, signed by Lewis, additionally inscribed, in c. 1951, ‘To Geoffrey Bridson (through whom I am enabled to finish this book) – deepest thanks and friendliest greetings / Wyndham Lewis’.
£2500
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PRIESTLEY, J. B.
Angel Pavement …
London, William Heinemann Ltd, 1930.
First edition, the deluxe issue, no. 308 of 1025 copies signed by the author.
£150
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LEWIS, Wyndham.
Snooty Baronet.
London, Cassell & Co. Ltd., 1932.
First edition, first issue binding, the first of three books Lewis published with Cassell, and the first of his novels not to find an American publisher.
£400
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POWYS, John Cowper.
A Glastonbury Romance.
London, John Lane The Bodley Head Limited, [1933].
First edition of Powys’s monumental sixth novel. Though we cannot trace a direct link between Powys and Bridson, Bridson certainly knew Powys’s friend James Hanley - they worked together for the BBC during the war. The centrality of the Grail legends to A Glastonbury Romance would have been...
£175
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MITCHISON, Naomi; Wyndham LEWIS, illustrator.
Beyond this Limit …
[London,] Jonathan Cape, [1935].
First edition. This was Lewis’s only collaboration with Mitchison but she arranged for the publication of his Left Wings over Europe the following year, and they remained friends until his death. 32 designs by Lewis served as the inspiration for Mitchison’s narrative.
£75
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LEWIS, Wyndham.
The Revenge for Love.
London, Cassell & Co. Ltd., [1937].
First edition, very scarce in the dust-jacket, of ‘one of Lewis’s finest novels … a brilliant novel of character’ (Bridson, The Filibuster), set in pre-Civil War Spain and centred on an incident of Communist gun-running on the border. ‘Here for once, Communism is accepted as a fact of...
£1250
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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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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