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Human Sciences

Contact Jonathan Harrison, Alfred Pasternack or Barbara Scalvini

Human 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; 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.

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  1. LA SALLE, Antoine de.

    Méchanique morale, ou essai sur l’art de perfectionner et d’employer ses organes, propres, acquis et...

    Geneva, [s.n.], 1789.

    Uncommon first edition of La Salle’s wide-ranging work in which he examines, inter alia, understanding, learning, reasoning, syllogism, the Baconian method, asking and answering questions, physiognomy, qualities of character, and eloquence. Having travelled widely in his youth – to Newfoundland,...

    £250

  2. LA SALLE, Jean-Baptiste, Saint. 

    Les règles de la bienséance et de la civilité chrétienne, divisées en deux parties. 

    Rheims, Le Batard [– Barbier], 1808. 

    Rare edition of La Salle’s pedagogical work, printed in civilité type and bound in printed and manuscript waste.  The Règles of St Jean-Baptiste La Salle (1651–1719) first appeared in 1702 and, an immediate success, were reprinted innumerable times until well into the nineteenth...

    £750

  3. LA SERRE, Jean-Puget de.

    Grab-Statt der weltlichen Ergötzlichkeiten, einstens in Französischer Sprache zubereitet … anjetzt...

    Regensburg, Johann Conrad Peetz und Bader, 1738.

    First edition in German of Tombeau des délices du monde, by the French dramatist and historian Jean-Puget de la Serre (1594–1665).

    £375

  4. [LAW.]

    The Law of Commons and Commoners, or a Treatise shewing the Original and Nature of Common, and several Kinds thereof ...

    London, assigns of Richard and Edward Atkins for John Walthoe, 1698.

    First edition of an unattributed popular treatise on the law of common land. The text discusses, with reference to and explanations of previous cases, ‘the daily Controversies that arise about the Rights and Titles of Commoning, the Torts and Damages done to Commoners, and the various Prescriptions...

    £250

  5. [LAW, John.]

    Abbildung des auf der Strasse Quincampoix in Paris entstandenen so berühmten Actien-Handel. Excudit C. Weigel nach...

    [1720.]

    This engraving is a German version of ‘Rue Quinquempoix en l'Année 1720’(BM Catalogue 1655). It gives a view, in angular perspective, of the Rue Quinquempoix, Paris, with crowds of persons assembled there during the share mania of the Mississippi, South Sea, and other schemes which bubbled in the...

    £1250

  6. LAWRENCE, James Henry. 

    A Picture of Verdun, or the English Detained in France … from the Portfolio of a Detenu. 

    London, T. Hookham junior & E.T. Hookham, 1810. 

    First edition of this remarkable account of life among the British prisoners in Napoleonic Verdun, following the mass arrest of English residents in and visitors to France. 

    £600

  7. LEBRUN. 

    Souvenirs d’une coureuse de rues, dite accrocheuse, par Lebrun.  Prix 60 centimes. 

    Brussels, Joostens, Imprimeur-Libraire-Editeur, 1861.

    First and only edition of this salacious tale of a mother-daughter duo who seek to defraud men through seduction. 

    £400

  8. LEGGE, James. 

    The Chinese Classics: with a translation, critical and exegetical notes, prolegomena, and copious indexes … In...

    Hong Kong, at the author’s; London, Trübner & Co., 1861 [– 1865]. 

    First editions of the first four volumes of Legge’s monumental Chinese Classics, with parallel Chinese and English texts, detailed introductions, notes, and indexes. 

    £3750

  9. LE GROS, Nicolas.

    Meditations sur les epistres Catholiques de S. Jacques, S. Pierre, et St. Jean. Avec le texte Latin et François...

    Paris, chez Savoye, 1754.

    First edition of this extensive work of meditations by the Jansenist Nicolas Le Gros (1675–1751), who had been a canon of Rheims Cathedral but became an exile in Holland and a member of the schismatic Church of Utrecht. A set of meditations just on the epistles of St. Peter had been published in 1736....

    £1250

  10. LEIBNIZ, Gottfried Wilhelm.

    Oeuvres de Leibniz publiées pour la première fois d’après les manuscrits originaux avec notes...

    Paris, Firmin Didot, 1859-1875.

    A handsome seven-volume edition of the correspondence and historical and political writings of the German polymath Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716), the ‘last universal genius’, edited by Louis-Alexandre Foucher de Careil (1826–1891), with texts in French, German, and Latin. The second volume...

    £250

  11. LELAND, John.

    The Itinerary of John Leland, in or about the Years 1535-1543. Edited by Lucy Toulmin Smith, with a Foreword by Thomas...

    London, Centaur Press Ltd, 1964.

    The authoritative edition of Leland’s Itinerary, a monument of English bibliography and antiquarian research. The Itinerary comprises the notes of the antiquary John Leland (c. 1503–1552) on his journeys through England and Wales during the dissolution of the monasteries. According...

    £75

  12. LELAND, John.

    The Itinerary of John Leland, in or about the Years 1535-1543. Edited by Lucy Toulmin Smith, with a Foreword by Thomas...

    London, Centaur Press Ltd, 1964.

    The authoritative edition of Leland’s Itinerary, a monument of English bibliography and antiquarian research. The Itinerary comprises the notes of the antiquary John Leland (c. 1503–1552) on his journeys through England and Wales during the dissolution of the monasteries. According...

    £50

  13. [LE MARCHE.] 

    Deed relating to the sale of property in Beltrovato (a district of Morrovalle in the Province of Macerata in the...

    [Rome, 1616.] 

    A curiously bound public instrument notarised by the Apostolic Camera in Rome detailing the sale of property belonging to two brothers from the influential de’ Mozzi family of Macerata. 

    £850

  14. [LE MERCIER DE LA RIVIÈRE, Pierre Paul].

    Die glückliche Nation, oder der Staat von Felizien. Ein Muster der vollkommensten Freyheit...

    Leipzig, Voss, 1794.

    Very rare first German edition of Le Mercier de la Rivière’s physiocratic utopia L’heureuse nation, ou Relation du gouvernement des Féliciens, which had first appeared in French in 1792.

    £1250

  15. LE MIRE, Aubert (editor). 

    Rerum toto orbe gestarum chronica a Christo nato ad nostra usque tempora.  Auctoribus Eusebio...

    Antwerp, apud Hieronymum Verdussium, 1608. 

    First edition of this collection of chronicles, covering sixteen hundred years of world history from the birth of Christ to its publication, composed by the ecclesiastical historian Aubert le Mire of Brussels, this copy from the library of Jacques Auguste de Thou. 

    £3750

  16. [LE NOBLE, Pierre, and Eustache LE NOBLE (attributed).] 

    Les Amours d’Anne d’Austriche, Epouse de Louis 13. ...

    ‘A Cologne, Chez Pierre Marteau, 1696’ [France, early eighteenth century]. 

    An early manuscript copy of a salacious – and treasonous – history arguing that Louis XIV was the illegitimate child of Anne of Austria and Cardinal Richelieu, bound with four engravings. 

    £850

  17. LÉVI-STRAUSS, Claude.

    The Tupí-Cawahíb.

    Washington, United States Government Printing Office, 1948.

    A set of offprints of four articles by Lévi-Strauss from the Smithsonian’s Handbook of South American Indians, inscribed by the author. In each article Claude Lévy-Strauss (1908–2009) provides an illustrated introduction to an Amazonian group, recording their history, social and political...

    £300

  18. LEWIS, Wyndham. 

    Doom of Youth …

    London, Chatto & Windus, 1932. 

    First English edition, one of Lewis’s scarcest works (only 549 copies avoided destruction).  Doom of Youth began life as a series of seven articles on youth politics in Time and Tide in June–July 1931, rounded off with a pair by G.K. Chesterton; it was expanded and first published...

    £2000

  19. LEWIS, Wyndham.

    The Old Gang and the New Gang.

    London, Desmond Harmsworth, 1933.

    First edition, binding variant (1), a work on ‘youth cults’ and the rise of European dictatorships. Bridson’s review was not especially complimentary, noting ‘that peculiar “kiddish” idiom which Mr. Lewis uses to advantage in his satiric novels and to little purpose elsewhere … We can excuse...

    £250

  20. LEWIS, Wyndham.

    Left Wings Over Europe: or, how to make a War about Nothing.

    London, Jonathan Cape, [1936].

    First edition, first printing, a reiteration of the delusions about Hitler that Lewis had first presented in Hitler (1931), alongside a rejection of the Internationalism he had argued so firmly for in The Art of Being Ruled and would later espouse once more. Lewis afterwards dismissed the...

    £500