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SpecializationsArt and ArchitectureWe specialize in rare and antiquarian books concerning architecture and architectural history up to the mid nineteenth century. We stock books on interior decoration and ornament, landscape and garden design, festival and theatre architecture, as well as books on the fine arts and aesthetics. We also offer books documenting the emergence of museums from the development of private cabinets of curiosities, to princely collections of fine art and, finally, national museums.The history of archaeology, embracing Renaissance interest in
numismatics and sculpture, investigations by early antiquaries
in Britain and Europe, excavations by Grand Tour connoisseurs
and dealers in antiquities, and the scientific approach to archaeology
in the nineteenth century, is another area of interest. ContinentalThis encompasses early books in Greek, Latin and the vernacular, important for their textual content, their place in the history of writing or early printing, or often as physical objects, as bindings. So it might be a Middle English Boethius, an unrecorded fragment of twelfth-century Middle High German (recently restored to an appropriate home in Germany), or a clutch of English romanesque documents preserving their original seals. Or it could be the first book printed in Toledo (1486), Montaigne’s heavily annotated copy of Lucretius, or an elaborate presentation binding from Cardinal Bellarmine to James I. As well, it might be one of the elusive seventeenth-century editions of Dante, or a piece of Renaissance neo-Latin verse for which there may be only one or two customers in the world. Regular lists are issued, offering a wide variety of items – for example an unrecorded manuscript of Wyclif’s Logic, Castiglione’s first book, or an unrecorded broadside account of the earthquake which hit Seville in 1624. Our recent list, Around Montaigne, offers a group of books reflecting the intellectual life of Bordeaux in the time of Montaigne.Contact Nicholas Poole-Wilson English Literature and HistoryBritish literature and history from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century, with an emphasis on poetry, fiction, and drama, is one of our major specialities. We usually have a selection of major authors from the STC and Wing period (i.e. before 1701), and a broad range of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century fiction. Our permanent display of Elizabethan and Jacobean books for sale at Shakespeare’s Globe in Southwark includes original editions of early plays. We also have a selection of literary autographs and historical manuscripts. Among important works which have passed through our hands are 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 some fifty Shakespeare First Folios.Contact Ted Hofmann or Donovan Rees European LiteratureWe are especially interested in eighteenth-, nineteenth- and twentieth-century literature in continental European languages, focusing particularly on rare and important works of French, German, Italian, Russian, Spanish and South American literature. We regularly have in stock first editions of authors as diverse as Akhmatova, Balzac, Borges, Camus, Chekhov, Dostoevsky, Goethe, Goldoni, Hugo, Kafka, Leopardi, Lorca, Manzoni, Pirandello, Pushkin, Schiller, Tolstoy, Zola, and many others. Among the important works which have passed through our hands are the original working manuscript of Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons, now in the Pushkin House in St Petersburg, and the only known copy of the first edition of Brecht’s first play, Baal (1920), with his working notes.Contact Wendy Cruise Human SciencesHuman Sciences at Quaritch embraces a wide range of books and manuscripts documenting the history of ideas from the earliest times up to about 1960. Our strengths are in the history of economic thought and in philosophy, but we also deal in law, finance and banking (including speculation, actuarial science and insurance), politics and political theory, sociology and psychology, agriculture, education, logic and the theory of language. Some notable items which have recently passed through our hands include the only known copy of the Communist Manifesto inscribed by Karl Marx, Rudolf Carnap’s annotated copy of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus (Logisch-philosophische Abhandlung), Joseph Penso de la Vega’s Confusion de Confusiones (1688, the first book to describe the practice of a stock-exchange) and a copy of Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations (4th edition, 1786), inscribed in Smith’s own hand to Bonnie Prince Charlie’s private secretary.As well as dealing in individual books and manuscripts, we also
offer collections. In recent years we have sold author collections
of Friedrich Nietzsche, Bertrand Russell, Thorstein Veblen, Emile
Durkheim and Jeremy Bentham. Among subject collections we have
offered are the Herwood Library of accounting literature (including
Pacioli’s Summa de Arithmetica, 1494, the first printed
exposition of double-entry book-keeping); the philosophy of language;
texts pertaining to the theory and study of language in the West,
and the history of probability – the calculus of probabilities,
statistics and their applications. Middle EastWe have a deep interest in the handwritten legacy of the Arab and Islamic world and in European books about the region. We are particularly experienced in the finding, formation and placement of themed collections suitable for national institutions or private libraries.Contact Alex Day or Meis Al-Kaisi PhotographsWe specialize in rare photographs from the early days of the medium and have handled such pioneering works as Fox Talbot’s Pencil of Nature (1844) and, recently, his Sun Pictures in Scotland (1845). Nineteenth-century travel photography and photographically illustrated books are of great interest: a major new acquisition of ours is one of only four known complete copies of Thomson’s Foochow and the River Min (1873), which is considered to be one of the most beautiful examples of the photographically illustrated book. Also of interest are images by photographers specializing in fine art and documentary work from the early twentieth-century to the present.Contact Lindsey Stewart Science and Natural HistoryScience at Quaritch is broadly defined, ranging from medicine, anatomy, pharmacology (including herbals) and natural history to astronomy, physics, chemistry and mathematics. An interest in the origins of modern chemistry has led to a specialisation in works on alchemy and distillation, and from there we have also branched out into occultism and hermeticism. We have developed an interest in gastronomy and books on nutrition and wine, an area which over the years has become one of our ‘non-scientific’ specialities.Contact Detlev Auvermann TravelWe stock Western books in European languages, generally – but not exclusively – published before circa 1850. We are especially interested in early travel accounts – from the late fifteenth to the eighteenth centuries – in all areas beyond Europe. Geographical regions in which we have tended to specialize include the Pacific and its surrounding countries – South America, the Northwest Coast of America, Japan, China, the maritime regions of Asia, including the Philippines and Indonesia, and Australia. Books on Africa, the polar regions, manuscripts and separately published maps are also handled.Contact Alex Day or Katherine Spears Archives and Manuscript CollectionsQuaritch buys and sells archives and post-medieval manuscripts. We also negotiate private treaty sales of archives in many fields including literature, history, politics, science, theatre, publishing and business. We provide formal valuations of archives for probate and insurance purposes and offer advice and assistance on individual items and collections eligible for conditional exemption from United Kingdom taxation and for acceptance in lieu of inheritance tax.We have sold the archives of Laurence Olivier, Ralph Richardson, Kenneth Tynan, Laurie Lee, Dame Muriel Spark, Michael Holroyd, the Royal Society of Literature and many other individuals and institutions. On behalf of libraries in Britain, Ireland and America we have valued the John Murray Archives, the papers of Francis Crick, the John Evelyn archive, the Macclesfield (Sir Isaac Newton) papers, the Abinger (Shelley and Godwin) papers and many other collections. Further information on Quaritch valuations is available here. Contact
Joan Winterkorn. Medieval manuscripts are handled
by our Continental specialists.
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