Poetry
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THOMAS, Dylan. "The Song of the Mischievous Dog" in Swansea Grammar School Magazine.Swansea : December 1925 & July 1926
The scarce first printed example of Thomas's poetry, a humorous 16-line poem entitled "The Song of the Mischievous Dog", written when he was just 11 years old and printed on p. 74 of the December 1925 issue of his school magazine. Thomas was in form 3A, a class which receives praise in the same issue as the leading football team in their year. Thomas... Learn More£2,000.00Stock Code: 140527
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BROWNING, Robert. Poems.London : 1912
A handsomely bound copy of the Oxford Edition, first published in 1905. Learn More£95.00Stock Code: 140676
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MILTON, John. The Poetical Works.Oxford : 1900
A handsomely bound copy of Milton's poetry. Learn More£95.00Stock Code: 140677
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TENNYSON, Alfred, Lord. The Works.London : 1907
A handsomely bound copy of Tennyson's poetical works. This is a reprint of the Complete Edition first published in 1894. Learn More£95.00Stock Code: 140678
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QUILLER-COUCH, Arthur. The Oxford Book of English Verse, 1250-1900.Oxford : 1912
A handsomely bound edition of Quiller-Couch's collection of English poetry, first published in 1900. "This volume soon became the standard anthology of English verse and sold nearly a million volumes during Quiller-Couch's lifetime" (ODNB). Learn More£75.00Stock Code: 140674
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(BAUMANN, Gustave, illust.) BANNING, Kendall. Pirates! or, The Cruise of the Black Revenge.Chicago : 1918
First trade edition, first printing, of this collection of 13 poems and accompanying woodcuts, following the limited edition of 525 copies in a larger format on handmade paper published by the Brothers of the Book in 1916. The publisher, Laurence Woodworth was the scrivener for the Brothers of the Book, a small private press "made up of those who like... Learn More£250.00Stock Code: 140322
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(BRITISH POETS.) Aldine Edition of the British Poets.London : 1831-1852
A very pretty set of Pickering's Aldine Edition of the British poets, celebrated both for the elegance of the typography and the diligence of its editors. The two-decade long publishing project brings together a vast selection of the works of British writers, including Chaucer, Shakespeare, Spencer, Milton, Dryden, Pope, Swift and Gray. Learn More£6,500.00Stock Code: 139248
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ROSSETTI, Christina. Poems.London : 1892
Arthur Edward Waite's copy of this attractive collection of Christina Rossetti's poems, with his bookplate to the front pastedown. This copy has the contemporary ownership inscription of Waite's muse and great love Dora Stuart Menteath to the front free endpaper, "Dora Stuart Menteath, Feb 23rd 1893". Waite met Dora in 1886 and the two fell almost immediately... Learn More£450.00Stock Code: 130308
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YEATS, W. B. The Variorum Edition of the Poems.New York : 1957
Signed limited edition, number 381 of 825 copies signed by Yeats, and issued posthumously. The limitation sheets were signed by the author before his death in 1939, and retained by the publisher until the publication of this edition, which was deferred until after the war. Learn More£2,500.00Stock Code: 112375
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ACKROYD, Peter; Kevin Stratford; Graham Walker. The Works.No place : [c. 1970]-71-73
First editions, first impressions, of these three early Ackroyd publications.
The Works is Ackroyd's first appearance in print, Ouch is his first solo publication, and London Lickpenny, one of 500 copies only, was his second solo publication. All three works come from the library of Martin S. Golding, librarian and director... Learn More£500.00Stock Code: 140689
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WHITMAN, Walt. Ode a la France.Paris : 1917
First separate edition, first printing, one of 556 copies only, of this translation of Whitman's poem "O Star of France" dated 1870-71, which was first published in Leaves of Grass. Combet-Descombes's illustrations evoke the landscapes of the war-torn country after the Franco-Prussian War of July 1870 - May 1871, which marked the end of French... Learn More£325.00Stock Code: 140650
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SHAKESPEARE, William. The Royal Shakespeare Theatre Edition of The Sonnets.London : 1974
Signed limited edition, number 132 of 260 copies, signed on the introduction leaf by the actress Dame Peggy Ashcroft and on the limitation leaf by the calligrapher. This edition of the sonnets is printed in calligraphic form, since, as Ashcroft writes in her introduction, "when first written the Sonnets circulated 'among his private friends'... it seems... Learn More£500.00Stock Code: 140685
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BYRON, George Gordon Noel, Lord. The Works.Paris : 1831
An elegantly bound copy of Byron's poetical works. The French binder Joseph Thouvenin (17901834) was well-known for producing bindings in an "historical" style.
Galignani's Paris editions of the English poets were piracies (he also pirated Crabbe, Hazlitt, Washington Irving, Thomas Moore, Walter Scott, and Southey among others), but carefully done.... Learn More£500.00Stock Code: 140256
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(GREEK VERSE.) LUCAS, F. L. The Golden Cockerel Greek Anthology. A Selection of the Poems, Edited, with Translations into English Verse and an Introduction, by F. L. Lucas.London : 1937
First edition, first printing, number 190 of 206 copies printed on hand-made paper. A beautiful edition, edited and translated by F. L. Lucas, one of the finest Greek scholars of his generation - described by Virginia Woolf as "pure Cambridge: clean as a breadknife and as sharp" - gathering selections from fifty poets in a small compass. The illustrations... Learn More£1,250.00Stock Code: 139717
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TENNYSON, Alfred, Lord. Poetical Works.London : 1899
The Globe edition; a particularly handsome copy of Tennyson's poetry. Learn More£175.00Stock Code: 139195
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DICKEY, James. The Zodiac.Bloomfield Hills, MI : 1976
First edition, number 39 of 61 copies signed by the author with a single leaf of the typescript working draft bound in, Dickey's manuscript corrections in ink. A trade issue was released by Doubleday later in the same year. Learn More£150.00Stock Code: 140558
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(KELMSCOTT PRESS.) SWINBURNE, Algernon Charles. Atalanta in Calydon:Hammersmith : 1894
First Kelmscott edition, one of 250 copies on paper; a further 8 copies printed on vellum were also issued. Swinburne was a warm admirer of the Kelmscott Press books, and "when Atalanta (which was first published in 1865) was reprinted by Morris, Swinburne wrote to him that it was 'certainly one of the loveliest examples of even your incomparable press'"... Learn More£4,000.00Stock Code: 140418
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DANTE ALIGHIERI. The Vision; or Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise.London : 1819
Second and best edition of one of the most important translations of Dante of the Romantic era, following the very scarce first edition which appeared in 1814 in such a diminutive format that it was barely legible.
"In January 1797 Cary began his translation of Dante's Divina commedia into blank verse. He started with the Purgatorio in 1797-8, but... Learn More£1,500.00Stock Code: 139502
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SCHUYLER, James, & Helena Hughes. Collab.New York : 1969
First edition, limited issue, one of 200 unnumbered copies. Learn More£150.00Stock Code: 140172
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WHITE, Gleeson, & Charles Shannon, eds. The Pageant.London : 1896-7
First editions, first impressions. All published of a typically unfeasible 1890s venture, an artistic and literary collaboration between the "Rhymers' Club" decadents and the pre-Raphaelite aesthetes, and others, including work by Max Beerbohm, Robert Bridges, Edward Burne Jones, Charles Conder, Walter Crane, Austin Dobson, Ernest Dowson, Richard Garnett,... Learn More£400.00Stock Code: 140450
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MORRIS, William. The Earthly Paradise.London : 1896
An attractively bound set of Morris's epic poem The Earthly Paradise. "The poem that made Morris famous" was first published from 1868 to 1870 and tells the story of a band of 14th-century Norsemen who flee the Black Death in search of the reputed utopian "earthly paradise 'where none grow old'" (ODNB). The first Kelmscott Press edition was... Learn More£425.00Stock Code: 139927
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SCHUYLER, James. A Sun Cab.New York : 1972
First edition, limitied issue, one of 300 unnumbered copies, of which 26 were lettered A-Z and signed by the poet and the artist. Learn More£125.00Stock Code: 140170
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HUGHES, Ted. Collected Animal Poems.London : 1995
Number 73 of 292 uncorrected proof copies, presentation copy, inscribed by the author to his son on the limitation page, "For Nicholas, Many beasts that escaped the albion, and some that didn't, love Daddy". This copy is from the library of Frieda Hughes, daughter of Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath, though unmarked as such. Learn More£1,250.00Stock Code: 126477
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HEANEY, Seamus. Beowulf.London : 1999
First edition, first impression, signed by the author on the title page. Heaney's translation of the Anglo-Saxon epic, which he dedicated to the memory of Ted Hughes (1930-1998), won the 1999 Whitbread Book of the Year award. Learn More£550.00Stock Code: 135703
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HOUSMAN, A. E. Autograph letters to Professor Donald Robertson.Cambridge : 1920-36
An exceptional collection of autograph letters signed from poet and classicist A. E. Housman (1859-1936) to Donald Struan Robertson (1885-1961 - a stellar Greek scholar attached to Trinity College, Cambridge, from his undergraduate days until his death) and his wife. He was particularly respected for his work on Apuleius, and was Regius Professor of... Learn More£10,000.00Stock Code: 119798
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ARNOLD, Matthew. Poetical Works.London : 1910
Handsomely presented copy of Arnold's complete poems, first published in 1890, this being the 14th impression. Learn More£250.00Stock Code: 140552
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OWEN, Wilfred, & Jon Stallworthy (ed.) The complete poems and fragments.London & Oxford : 1983
First edition, review copy, with the loosely inserted publishers' review and press release sheets, of wartime poet Wilfred Owen's works. The first collection of Owen's poems was published two years after his death, in 1920, with an introduction by Siegfried Sassoon (1886-1967), and was followed by another in 1931, edited by the poet Edmund Blunden (1896-1974).... Learn More£450.00Stock Code: 140499
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THOMAS, Dylan. Deaths and Entrances. Poems.London : 1946
First edition, first impression, of Thomas's collection of poems, including "In My Craft or Sullen Art" and "Fern Hill". Scarce in such good condition. Learn More£250.00Stock Code: 140059
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GRAY, Thomas. An Elegy.Chicago & New York : [c.1900]
An attractive edition of Gray's Elegy in a charming unsigned contemporary binding. Gray's Elegy was originally published privately by Horace Walpole in June 1750 and distributed amongst his connections in the fashionable classes. It was then published for the public in a quarto pamphlet on 15 February 1751; "the poem was an instant... Learn More£150.00Stock Code: 139593
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(GONNE, Maud, illus.) YOUNG, Ella. Celtic Wonder-Tales.Dublin : 1910
First edition, first impression, presentation copy inscribed by the author on the original front free endpaper "To John Varian, With Greeting from Ella Young", and with over ten annotations in ink by Young.
The recipient, John Osborne Varian (1863-1931), was an Irish-American poet and a leader within the theosophist utopian community of Halcyon,... Learn More£1,750.00Stock Code: 139842
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WALLER, John, et al. The Cherwell, Vol. LIX, No. 7.1940
First edition, sole impression, John Waller's own copy, inscribed and double signed by him on the front cover "John Waller My copy. Ruth Douglas published my poems and he was the greatest illegible... John Waller". John Waller was an English author, poet and journalist, and a member of the Cairo poets during the Second World War Learn More£125.00Stock Code: 140314
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ROWSE, A. L. Extempore Memorial.St. Austell, : (1940)
First edition, sole impression, of a memorial poem by A. L. Rowse for Charles Henderson, historian and antiquarian of Cornwall, with whom he had edited Essays in Cornish History (1935). Learn More£125.00Stock Code: 140179
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(CUALA PRESS.) YEATS, W. B. & Dorothy Wellesley (eds.) A Broadside: No. 3 (New Series).Dublin : March 1937
First edition, one of 300 copies printed, of this attractive Cuala Press publication. Yeats's "The Three Bushes" was first published just two months prior in The London Mercury.
The Cuala Press Broadsides were issued monthly, with a bound set of the collected issues published at the end of the year in a smaller edition. The first series... Learn More£250.00Stock Code: 140544
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(CUALA PRESS.) YEATS, W. B. & F. R. Higgins (eds.) A Broadside: No. 2 (New Series).Dublin : February 1935
First edition, one of 300 copies printed, of this attractive Cuala Press publication. Yeats's "The Wicked Hawthorn Tree" was first published, untitled, at the end of the verse version of The King of the Great Clock Tower in 1934. The Cuala Press Broadsides were issued monthly, with a bound set of the collected issues published at the end of... Learn More£200.00Stock Code: 140551
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BROOKE, Rupert. The Poetical Works.London : 1959
Handsomely bound copy of Brooke's poetry. Ninth impression of this edition, first published in 1946. Learn More£225.00Stock Code: 140505
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BUTLER, Samuel. Hudibras, A Poem.London : 1819
First edition thus with Clarke's illustrations, and the extra matter gathered together from Grey, Hume, Smollett, Fox and others, handsomely bound. Samuel Butler's Hudibras is a satiric poem on the English Civil War, written in Chaucerian couplets and published 1663-78. Voltaire, who translated a condensed version of Hudibras into French, noted that... Learn More£500.00Stock Code: 140367
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CUMMINGS, E. E. Eimi.New York : 1933
First edition, signed limited issue, number 7 of 1,381 copies signed by the author, additionally inscribed "For H. W. from EEC. April 3". Eimi was a travelogue, in Cummings's signature abstract prose, of his visit to the Soviet Union in 1931. As explained on the limitation page, the unusual limitation was apparently simply a reflection of the number... Learn More£1,250.00Stock Code: 138117
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[FONSECA, Jose de., i.e. Pedro Carolino.] English as She is Spoke:London : [1883]
First UK edition, second printing, (stated second edition). The present work is an edited version of a mid-19th-century Portuguese-English phrase book, which unintentionally became a classic of humorous literature, commonly known as English as She is Spoke. Mark Twain wrote the introduction of the first US edition, also published in 1883, of... Learn More£500.00Stock Code: 140384
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DOUGLAS, Lord Alfred. Sonnets.London : 1935
First edition, first impression. John Heygate's copy, with his ownership inscription in ink on the front free endpaper. John Edward Nourse Heygate, 4th Baronet (19031976) was a Northern Irish journalist and novelist, perhaps best known for his affair with Evelyn Gardner while she was still married to Evelyn Waugh. Learn More£125.00Stock Code: 140397
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(MAPPLETHORPE, Robert.) RIMBAUD, Arthur. A Season in Hell.[New York] : 1986
First edition of this translation by Paul Schmidt, limited to 1,000 numbered copies signed by both Schmidt and Mapplethorpe; with the original 4-page long "Limited Editions Club Letter" loosely inserted.
First published in 1873, this prose poem was finished in a frenzy after the break-up of Rimbaud's relationship with Verlaine who shot him with... Learn More£1,500.00Stock Code: 139013
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GINSBERG, Allen. Reads Howl and other poems.San Francisco : 1959
First pressing (numbered 7006 on sleeve and vinyl) of this recording, stamped "Promotional copy not for sale" on the rear cover, and signed twice by Allen Ginsberg, on front cover and at the end of his introduction printed on the rear cover. Triumphant in the wake of the celebrated 1957 obscenity trial, Ginsberg concludes in characteristically strident... Learn More£1,500.00Stock Code: 140524
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CARPENTER, Edward (ed.) Iolaus:London : 1902
First edition, first impression, of this collection of poems, with Carpenter's commentary, celebrating homosexual love. The anthology includes excerpts from Ovid, Shakespeare, Tennyson, and Walt Whitman. Edward Carpenter (1844-1929) was a philosopher, poet, socialist, and early activist for gay rights. Learn More£175.00Stock Code: 140503
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PINTER, Harold. The Birthday Party.London : 1959
First edition, first impression, signed by the author on the title page. The Birthday Party was Pinter's first full-length play, "which, after a short, highly successful provincial tour, opened at the Lyric Hammersmith on 19 May 1958 but closed at the end of the week" (ODNB). Learn More£2,500.00Stock Code: 140336
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STEVENS, Wallace. The Man with the Blue Guitar.New York : 1937
First edition, first printing, second issue dust jacket. Includes the poems "Owl's Clover", "A Thought Revolved", and "The Men That Are Falling". Learn More£175.00Stock Code: 140392
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(CUALA PRESS.) [HULL, Eleanor.] Be Thou My Vision.Dublin : [1941]
First edition of this hand-coloured copy of the Irish hymn "Be thou my vision", translated by Old Irish scholar Eleanor Hull in 1912. A notable Cuala Press rarity; Liam Miller suggesting in his bibliography that only 54 copies were produced (p. 123). The Cuala Press was one half of the Cuala Industries, a co-operative business run by Yeats's sisters... Learn More£1,750.00Stock Code: 140243
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SPENDER, Stephen. Twenty Poems.Oxford : [1930]
First edition, limited issue, presentation copy, inscribed by the author on the second blank, "To Elizabeth, with love from Stephen. June 11th". From a total edition of 135 copies, of which 75 copies were numbered and signed. This, the author's second book, was published while Spender was a student at Oxford: it was well received and prompted T. S.... Learn More£600.00Stock Code: 140052
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UNZER, Johanna Charlotte. Versuchin sittlichen und zärtlichen Gedichten.[Leipzig : 1754
First edition of a beautifully produced work of verse, printed by the celebrated German typographer Johann Gottlob Immanuel Breitkopf.
"The only significant German woman writer of 'anacreontic poetry'", Johanna Charlotte Unzer (1724/25-1782) published two early books of verse: the present, a set of contemplative poems which "include illuminating... Learn More£575.00Stock Code: 137490
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![[Cyrillic:] Requiem.](https://d3dzzbbvj9im7s.cloudfront.net/media/catalog/product/cache/ae0834d12b7cf129fc73bcc000ea526a/1/4/140541.jpg)
AKHMATOVA, Anna. [Cyrillic:] Requiem.Munich : 1963
First edition in book form, one of 500 copies, of Akhmatova's masterpiece. Requiem was an outcry, a cycle of poems written from 1935 and capturing the horrors and anguish of the Great Terror under Stalin, during which Akhmatova's husband and son were both sent to the gulag. The poems in Requiem, unpublishable in Russia, were absent from Akhmatova's... Learn More£1,750.00Stock Code: 140541
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JOHNSON, Samuel. The Works of the English Poets.London : 1790
Second edition, with 14 authors, including Johnson himself, added to the original selection of 1779-81. The ultimate literary success of Johnson's career, the prefaces written to append the vast collection of English poetry were quickly recognized as setting a new standard for English literary biography. "In particular, the surveys of Cowley, Milton,... Learn More£2,500.00Stock Code: 140493
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TAGORE, Rabindra Nath. Gitanjali (Song Offerings).London : 1912
First edition in English, one of 750 copies printed, of which just 250 were released for sale, and now very scarce. Tagore's seminal collection of poems was first published in Bengali in 1910, however, it was the present work which caught the world's attention. With the support of W. B. Yeats, who provided the introduction, and the artist William Rothenstein,... Learn More£2,250.00Stock Code: 140189
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DRINKWATER, John. To Be Spoken with An Appeal for Funds For the Rebuilding of The Shakespeare Memorial Theatre at Stratford-upon-Avon.London : 1926
First edition, limited issue, number 1 of 25 specially printed copies, this inscribed by the author "No. 1. David from Jonathan". Drinkwater was the governor of the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre, along with George Bernard Shaw. This 14 line poem was written to petition for funds for the rebuilding of the theatre, after it was destroyed by fire in 1926.... Learn More£150.00Stock Code: 140034
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PRIDEAUX, Walter. Poems of Chivalry, Faery, and The Olden Time.London : 1840
First and only edition of this unusually early example of this genre, anticipating Tennyson's Arthurian poetry by over a decade. Possibly a family copy, with the ink ownership inscription "W. de C. Prideaux" to the half-title in a later hand, seemingly the author of Notes on Mediaeval Enamelled Armorial Horse Trappings, with Reference to a Weymouth... Learn More£275.00Stock Code: 139881
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RENAN, Ernest. Poetry of the Celtic Races, and Other Essays.London : [1897]
First edition in English, this book was first published in France in 1854 as "La poésie des races celtiques". Ernest Renan (1823-1892) is best known for his 1863 Vie de Jésus, which was an immediate success, but " it is Renan's approach to the subject and his beautiful prose that gave it lasting eminence" (PMM 352).
This copy belonged... Learn More£275.00Stock Code: 139627
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SHAKESPEARE, William. Songs and Sonnets.London : 1926
A very prettily bound copy of Palgrave's Golden Treasury edition, first published in 1865. Learn More£275.00Stock Code: 140119
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DONNE, John. Complete Poetry and Selected Prose.London : 1929
First Nonesuch Press edition, number 171 of 675 copies on special paper and in the deluxe morocco binding (a trade edition in cloth was also issued). Learn More£375.00Stock Code: 140122
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GINSBERG, Allen. Photographs.Altadena : 1990
First edition, first printing, inscribed copy, of Ginsberg's collection of photographs of his close friends, including Kerouac, Cassady, Burroughs, Orlovsky, Snyder, Corso and Leary; and some of luminaries such as Robert Frank, Basil Bunting, Lou Reed and Ken Kesey; all with revealing descriptive annotations in facsimile. From an edition of 5,100 copies,... Learn More£750.00Stock Code: 140264
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BROOKE, Rupert. The Collected Poems.London : 1919
First Riccardi Press edition, copy number 956 of 1,000 copies on handmade Riccardi Paper; an additional 13 were printed on vellum. Brooke's Collected Poems were first published in 1915 in the US, and then in the UK in 1918, expanded and with a memoir by Eddie Marsh - this is the first fine press edition, issued by Philip Lee Warner's Riccardi Press... Learn More£300.00Stock Code: 140298
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ELIOT, T. S. Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats.London : 1939
First edition, first impression, one of 3,005 copies printed. Eliot wrote the whimsical poems included in this collection throughout the 1930s, and included them under his assumed name "Old Possum" in letters to his godchildren. The work was adapted by Andrew Lloyd Webber into the musical Cats, which opened in the West End on 11 May 1981. Learn More£2,250.00Stock Code: 140029
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ELIOT, T. S. The Waste Land.London : 1961 [1962]
First Bodoni edition of Eliot's masterpiece, number 143 of 300 copies signed by the poet on the limitation leaf; a magnificent piece of book production executed in Verona under the direction of Giovanni Mardersteig, the greatest printer of the 20th century. Learn More£4,500.00Stock Code: 137130
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BROWNING, Robert. The Poetical Works.London : 1901
An attractively bound copy of Browning's poetry. Learn More£250.00Stock Code: 140251
