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.

  1. ALLAIS, Maurice Félix Charles.

    The hereditary and relativistic formulation of the demand for money: circular reasoning or a real...

    June 1975.

    The Nobel Prize economist Allais obtained the most prestigious of commendations for his pioneering contributions to the theory of markets and efficient utilization of resources. In this paper Allais takes issue with a note by J.L. Scadding, published in the same journal in March 1972, ‘on various aspects...

    £100

  2. ALVAREZ DE ARENALES, Jose.

    Noticias historicas y descriptivas sobre el gran pais del Chaco y Rio Bermejo; con observaciones relativas...

    Montevideo, [Imprenta del Comercio del Plata], 1850.

    Rare second edition, after the first of 1833, of this analysis of the Chaco and Rio Bermejo regions of Paraguay, divided into three sections. The first covers the geography, population and natural history of the area, the second relates the conquest of Paraguay and Peru, containing extracts from various...

    £100

  3. ANSWER OF THE MERCHANTS-PETITIONERS,

    and Trustees for the Factory at Legorn, to the Account of Damages, laid to the Charge of the...

    London: Printed in the Year 1704.

    First and only edition, scarce, part of a fascinating trade (and piracy) dispute involving English merchants in Livorno (or Leghorn), which brought England and Tuscany to the brink of war in 1704.

    £1350

  4. ANTWERP, William C. van.

    The Stock Exchange from Within. Illustrated from photographs.

    New York, Doubleday, Page & Company, 1913.

    First edition of this historical account of the New York Stock Exchange.

    £50

  5. ATLANTICUS, pseud.

    Ein Blick in den Zukunftsstaat. Produktion und Konsum im Sozialstaat. Mit einer Vorrede von Karl Kautsky.

    Stuttgart, J. H. W. Dietz, 1898.

    First edition of this utopian discourse on the industrial and commercial composition of the ideal socialised state. The most common attribution is to the Latvian-born economist Carl Ballod, though some, including the British Library, suggest the author Gustav Jaeckh. There is a significant foreword (pp....

    £100

  6. BALLOU, Adin.

    Practical Christian socialism: a conversational exposition of the true system of human society; in three parts, viz:...

    Hopedale and New York, by the author and Fowlers and Wells, 1854.

    First edition. Adin Ballou (1803-90), Universalist clergyman and leading American Christian social reformer, founded the utopian Hopedale Community in 1841, during the heyday of such communal experiments. He surrendered his presidency of Hopedale in 1852 in order to devote himself to expanding his movement...

    £450

  7. [BANK OF SCOTLAND.]

    Act of Parliament for erecting a bank in Scotland. Edinburgh, July 17 1695.

    Edinburgh, printed by the heirs and successors of Andrew Anderson, 1695.

    Very rare edition of the Act of Parliament establishing Scotland’s first and oldest bank, founded just one year after the Bank of England.

    £650

  8. BEARDÉ DE L’ABBAYE.

    Essays in agriculture: or, a variety of useful hints, for its improvement, with respect to air, water, earth,...

    London, T. Carnan, 1776.

    First and only edition in English. Little is known of Beardé; born at the beginning of the eighteenth century, he won the 1766 prize offered by the Agricultural Society of Saint Petersburg with his Essay in answer to the question ‘Est-il plus avantageux à un état que le paysan possède en propre...

    £200

  9. BELLONI, Girolami, Marchese.

    Del Commercio dissertazione.

    Rome, Niccolo and Marco Pagliarini, 1757.

    Second edition to be authorized by Belloni, (first, 1750) – the first edition to include the author’s considerations on ‘imaginary money’ (pp. 135-154) – of a work notable for its argument in favour of restrictions on the export of money by the Vatican banker Girolamo Belloni (1688–1760)....

    £300

  10. BENTHAM, William, barrister and numismatist.

    Autograph letter to the bookseller Lackington.

    Upper Gower Street [London], 25 August 1819.

    Writing in the third person, Bentham requests that he be sent the ‘Supplemt of Mr Ruding’s Coins intended for the purchasers of the quarto edn’. Rogers Ruding (1751-1820) published his Annals of the Coinage, a chronological account of English coinage, in four quarto volumes in 1817. It sold out...

    £100

  11. BEVERIDGE, William Henry.

    Full employment in a free society: a report ...

    London, George Allen & Unwin Ltd, [1944].

    First edition of the second report by the social reformer and economist W. H. Beveridge (1879-1963), a sequel to the epoch-making Beveridge report on Social Insurance and Allied Services made to the Government in December 1942. Beveridge had earlier published Unemployment: a Problem of Industry (1909),...

    £50

  12. BLANQUI, Jérôme Adolphe, l’Ainé.

    Histoire de l’économie politique en Europe, depuis les anciens jusqu’à nos jours, suivie...

    Paris, Guillaumin, 1837.

    First edition of ‘the first major history of political economy’ (The New Palgrave). Blanqui (1798–1854) taught at the Institution Massin, where he came into contact with J. B. Say, who was greatly impressed by him. In 1833, he succeeded Say as holder of the chair of political and industrial economy...

    £125

  13. BODEMER, Heinrich.

    Die Wirkungen der Creditpapiere in Bezug die Vehmehrung der Banken in Deutschland.

    Leipzig, Heinrich Hubner, 1853.

    First edition of a rare German treatise on banking, money, paper money and credit. Bodemer argues for a bettering and widening of credit in Prussia at a crucial time of its economic development, where both production and trade required ever more more advanced, unified and modern financial tools.

    £125

  14. BROUGHAM, Lord Henry.

    Lives of men of letters and science who flourished in the time of George III … with portraits, engraved...

    London, Charles Knight and Co., 1845-47.

    First edition of the first volume (1845), later edition of the second volume (dated 1847, first published 1846) of Brougham’s lives which includes Voltaire, Hume, Davy, Johnson, and Adam Smith to name a few stars in the firmament of the reign of George III, or, in Brougham’s terms, the ‘Augustan...

    £125

  15. CAGNAZZI, Luca de Samuele.

    Analisi dell’ economia privata e pubblica degli antichi relativamente a quella de’ moderni …

    Naples, Società filomatica, 1830.

    First edition. Cagnazzi (1764–1852) was originally a teacher of mathematics by profession, receiving a professorship at Naples in 1806. ‘His life was full of trouble; having been concerned in political intrigues, he had to flee from Naples and, after wandering, nearly always on foot, through Italy...

    £125

  16. CAIROL, M. de.

    Réflexions historiques et politiques, sur les revolutions qu’a essuyé l’agriculture sous différens gouvernemens,...

    Amsterdam and Toulouse, Joseph Robert, 1786.

    Very rare essay on the state of agriculture in France, and in particular in the Languedoc, examining the ways in which the policies of various governments (from the Romans and Visigoths onwards) have affected agricultural production, the current situation, and the ways in which matters could be...

    £450

  17. CALVERT, William John.

    The demand for labour is wealth … Supplement to monopoly and taxation vindicated against the errors of...

    Newark, M. Hage and London, Longman … 1822.

    Very rare first edition of Calvert’s supplement to his own work, Monopoly and taxation vindicated etc., published in 1821. Calvert wrote anonymously in the name of ‘a Nottinghamshire farmer’, but here uses his name. The supplement argues that Britain’s wealth and military success against France...

    £250

  18. [CAMPOMANES, Pedro Rodriguez, Conde de].

    Discurso sobre el Fomento de la Industria popular. De orden de S. M. [Carlos III] y del...

    Madrid, D. Antonio de Sancha, 1774.

    First edition; preceding the complementary Discurso sobre la educación popular de los artesanos y su fomenta (1775); Dutch and Italian editions appeared in 1780 and 1787. Campomanes (1723–1802) was, according to McCulloch, ‘one of the most intelligent and distinguished Spanish statesmen of [the...

    £400

  19. CAMPOMANES, Pedro Rodriguez (Antonio Conca y Alcaraz, translator).

    Trattato della regalia d’ammortizzazione, nel quale si dimostra,...

    Parma, Filippo Carmignani, 1767.

    First Italian translation of this influential treatise on the property rights of the Church and the state in Spain by the Spanish philosopher, economist, and historian Pedro Rodríguez de Campomanes (1723-1803).

    £350

  20. CAREY, Henry Charles.

    Principles of social science … In three volumes …

    Philadelphia, J.B. Lippincott, 1858-1859.

    First edition, a very attractive copy, of Carey’s principal work. ‘His treatment of social science was original, and led him to a series of supposed discoveries, the order of which he has stated in the introduction of his most important work The Principles of Social Science. His point of departure...

    £500