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. KRUG, Leopold.

    Abriss der Staatsökonomie oder Staatswirtschaftslehre.

    Berlin, Realschulbuchhandlung, 1808.

    Rare first edition. Krug was a civil servant whose writings on political economy and statistics had to be carved out of ‘the odd spare hour’. From 1805 to 1834 he was heavily involved in the development and expansion of the Prussian Statistical Bureau, during which time he conducted numerous statistical...

    £350

  2. [SMITH, Adam.] [STEWART, Dugald.]

    Account of the life and writings of Adam Smith, LL.D. From the Transactions of the Royal Society...

    [Edinburgh? N.p. 1794?].

    First separate edition of the first ‘Life’ of Adam Smith, and one of only a handful of copies that were printed for limited private issue. A year later, it was incorporated into the Essays on Philosophical Subjects, and later in editions of the Wealth of Nations. Stewart (1753-1828) read the paper...

    £3750

  3. [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

  4. [TRADE AND EXCISE].

    An Additional Act for the better improvement and advancing the receipts of the Excise and New-Impost. At the...

    London, Henry Hills and Iohn Field, Printers to His Highness, 1657.

    First edition. The most substantial part of the Act, entitled ‘A Book of Values of Merchandize imported, according to which, excize is to be paid by the first buyer’, includes a 40-page alphabetical list of imported commodities, each recorded with the respective payable duty. A lively and detailed...

    £250

  5. MILL, John Stuart, and Jánosi FERENCZ (translator).

    A képviseleti kormány.

    Pest, Emich Gusztáv Tulajdona, 1867.

    First Hungarian edition of Considerations on representative Government, Mill’s most important political work after On Liberty. In his major work on political institutions Mill ‘discusses to what extent forms of government are a matter of choice, the criterion of a “good form of government”, and...

    £875

  6. 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

  7. PETTY, William, Sir.

    Another essay in political arithmetick, concerning the growth of the City of London: with the measures,...

    1682. London, printed by H.H. for Mark Pardoe, 1683.

    First edition, exceptionally scarce – indeed unique in its uncut and unbound state – of Petty’s first work of political arithmetic, a landmark work of statistics, demography, and economics.

    £12000

  8. [PRADT, Dominique Georges Frédéric de Riom de Prolhiac du Four de].

    Antidote au Congrès de Rastadt, ou Plan d’un nouvel équilibre...

    London [i.e. Hamburg], 1798.

    First edition of the Abbé de Pradt’s first and most famous work. The entries for the present work in Barbier, Quérard and NUC (which gives a different pagination) all include ‘par l’auteur des “Considérations sur la France”’ in their transcription of the title-page. Our copy is completely...

    £250

  9. GUASP Y PUJOL, Manuel.

    Apuntes de Economia Política. Cursos de 1866 a 1867 – 1867 a 1868 en la Universidad de Barcelona.

    [Barcelona], 1868.

    Unique witness to the lectures of political economy taught by Manuel Guasp y Pujol at Barcelona in the mid-1860s: a ponderous manuscript, endowed with the depth of numerous corrections and additions, amounting to an unpublished full-blown treatise on political economy, with topics such as labour, capital,...

    £850

  10. [PAPER TRADE.] 

    Arrest du conseil d’état du roi, portant modération et interprétation de plusieurs articles du tarif des...

    [Besançon?, 1772?] 

    A seemingly unrecorded issue of this decree governing tariffs on paper and cardboard in Louis XV’s France, with no imprint but with the colophon ‘fait à Besançon le 18 avril 1772, signé, Lacoré’. 

    £175

  11. [MALTHUS, Thomas Robert].

    Art. I - Essay on Political Economy. Supplement to the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Vol. VI. Part I. Edinburgh....

    The Quarterly Review Vol. XXX No. LX, January 1824, pp. 298-334.

    First edition. A review by Thomas Malthus of John Ramsay McCulloch’s famous essay on political economy.

    £100

  12. MYRDAL, Gunnar.

    Asian Drama. An inquiry into the poverty of nations.

    New York, Pantheon, 1968.

    Third printing, published in the same year as the first edition, of this important study which took ten years to complete.

    £65

  13. HUSKISSON, William (1770-1830), politician.

    Autograph letter signed (‘W Huskisson’) to an unnamed ‘Dear Sir’.

    18 Hertford Street [London], 21 December, 1810.

    Huskisson was a leading exponent of strict adherence to the Gold standard and an opponent of the perceived over-issue of bank notes in the early nineteenth century. This letter was written only a few months after Huskisson had published his important pamphlet, The question concerning the depreciation...

    £150

  14. 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

  15. MEADE, James Edward (1907-1995), economist.

    Autograph manuscript page and accompanying black and white passport photograph.

    [c. 1977].

    A leaf of autograph manuscript, presumably sent at the request of a collector, giving part of the text of Meade’s Nobel Memorial Lecture, ‘The meaning of “internal balance”’, which he delivered in December 1977. Meade writes: ‘To treat the whole of macro-economic control as a single subject...

    £150

  16. [GOLD and SILVER.] 

    Bando generale per gli orefici, argentieri, ed altri che comprano, vendono, ed in qualsivoglia modo...

    Rome, ‘nella stamperia della Rev. Camera Apostolica’, 1815. 

    Rare edict governing goldsmiths, silversmiths, and traders in gold and silver operating in Rome and the Papal States, issued by Cardinal Bartolomeo Pacca (1756–1844) in January 1815 as Camerlengo to Pope Pius VII.

    £475

  17. JACOBS, H. W.

    Betterment Briefs. A Collection of Published Papers on Organized Industrial Efficiency.

    New York, John Wiley & Sons, 1909.

    Second, definitive edition. ‘The nucleus of the present volume is a series of four articles published by Mr Jacobs in The Engineering Magazine from September, 1906, to January, 1907, under the title “Organization and Economy in the Railway Machine Shop”. This was followed in June by a paper on...

    £220

  18. TUCKER, Josiah.

    Betydande frågor om handelen, wid tilfålle af de motsäjelser, som skedde emot den sista billen, om utlänningars...

    [v. Oelreich], 1763.

    First Swedish edition, scarce, of this history on the treatment of foreign residents in Britain, Reflections on the Expediency of a Law for the Naturalization of Foreign Protestants (1751–1752). This book comprises only the main body of Part II (1752), ‘Important Queries occasioned by The Rejection...

    £200

  19. [LONDON ASSURANCE CORPORATION.]

    By-laws, orders, and rules, for the good government of the corporation of the London assurance....

    London, [n.p.], 1722.

    First edition of the by-laws of the London Assurance Corporation, which, along with The Royal Exchange Assurance Corporation, was constituted and granted sole rights, excepting private individuals, to the granting of assurance and bottomry by ‘The Bubble Act’ of 1720. The right to self-govern, reflected...

    £550

  20. [RALPH, James].

    The case of authors by profession or trade, stated: with regard to booksellers, the stage, and the public. No matter...

    London, R. Griffiths, 1758.

    First edition, ‘the first protest raised in the eighteenth century against the treatment of authors and dramatists by booksellers and theatre managers’ (ODNB). From this work Isaac D’Israeli extensively quoted (without acknowledgement) in his Calamities of authors, and it is very likely that Oliver...

    £850