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.

  1. PYNCHON, Thomas.

    Gravity’s Rainbow.

    New York, The Viking Press, [1973].

    First edition of Pynchon’s magnum opus, ‘literally indescribable, a tortured cadenza of lurid imaginings and total recall that goes on longer than you can quite believe’ (Michael Wood).

    £900

  2. LEWIS, Wyndham.

    Unlucky for Pringle. Unpublished and other Stories … Edited and introduced by C. J. Fox and Robert Chapman.

    [London,] Vision, [1973].

    First edition, inscribed by the editor ‘To Geoffrey and Joyce Bridson with warmest good wishes Cy Fox’. Seven of the fifteen stories were first published here. Fox’s postcard thanks Bridson for a letter ‘which was terrifically gratifying – especially from one who did so much to get the monumental...

    £100

  3. LEWIS, Wyndham.

    The Roaring Queen. Edited and introduced by Walter Allen.

    London, Secker & Warburg, [1973].

    Limited edition, no XXVII of XXX copies not for sale, signed by Mrs Wyndham Lewis, Michael Ayrton & Walter Allen, with a signed etching by Michael Ayrton. A further 100 numbered copies were for general sale at £30 each.

    £500

  4. LEWIS, Wyndham.

    The Roaring Queen. Edited and introduced by Walter Allen.

    London, Secker & Warburg, [1973].

    Second (but first published) edition, regular copy.

    £50

  5. LEWIS, Wyndham.

    Mrs Dukes’ Million.

    Toronto, The Coach House Press, 1977.

    First edition, Lewis’s first novel, written in 1908-10 but never before published.

    £75

  6. GALLICO, Paul.

    An archive of thirty-four scrapbooks compiled by Gallico.

    1928–1972.

    A lovingly and meticulously compiled archive of the writing career of the novelist Paul Gallico. The scrapbooks are arranged chronologically and by book/film with letters, telegrams, publicity materials, photographs and ephemera neatly intermingled with copies of reviews and reactions from local, national,...

    £5500

  7. THOMAS, Dylan, and Sir Peter Blake, illustrator.

    Under Milk Wood: A Play for Voices.

    London: Apple Litho (Bristol) Ltd. for Enitharmon Editions and Queen Anne Press, 2013.

    De Luxe edition, number 61 of 100 copies with a signed print by Blake. This finely-produced edition was published to mark the centenary of Dylan Thomas’s birth and celebrates the culmination of over twenty-five years of work by Peter Blake, one of the founding fathers of British Pop Art. The book includes...

    £975