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. GEE, Joshua.

    The trade and navigation of Great-Britain considered: shewing that the surest way for a nation to increase in riches,...

    London, A. Bettesworth, C. Hitch … and S. Birt, 1738.

    Fourth edition of Gee’s most important work, first published in 1729. Written at a time of declining exports, decaying agriculture and high unemployment Trade and navigation discusses foreign trade with strong protectionist tendencies. Gee is keen to improve trade with the North American colonies,...

    £250

  2. GEORGE, Henry.

    Izbrannyia rechi i stat’i … Perevod s Angliiskago S. D. Nikolaeva. [Collected lectures and essays … Translated...

    [Nikolaev]. Moscow, ‘Posrednik’, 1905.

    First edition, very rare: Russian translations of 11 lectures and essays, published by the ‘Posrednik’ publishing house founded by Tolstoy, who was a vocal supporter of George and saw Russia as the natural home for his philosophy on the land question.

    £500

  3. GEORGE, Henry.

    A perplexed philosopher, being an Examination of Mr. Herbert Spencer’s various Utterances on the Land Question,...

    New York, Charles L. Webster & Company, 1892.

    First edition of George’s examination of Spencer’s stance on the land question. Asking the reader ‘to judge for himself Mr. Spencer’s own public declarations’ (p. 8), the political economist, popular orator, and politician Henry George (1839-1897) dismantles the arguments of the British...

    £30

  4. GIOJA, Melchiorre.

    Ideologia, esposta da Melchiorre Gioja ...

    Milan, Giovanni Pirotta, 1822-1823.

    First edition, a very good copy, of the work in which the Italian economist and philosopher expounds his theory of sensations and passions. It was immediately placed on the Index.

    £125

  5. GIOJA, Melchiorre.

    Del merito e delle ricompense, trattato storico e filosofico ...

    Filadelfia, [n. p.], 1830 (vol. I); Lugano, Giuseppe Ruggia, 1830 (vol. II).

    Second edition (first published in 1818, a third followed in 1832) of this important work by the political theorist, economist, and champion of Italian unity, Gioja (1767–1829). ‘He contended in his best known work, Del merito e delle ricompense ..., which was inspired by Beccaria’s Dei delitti...

    £250

  6. [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

  7. [GREAT BRITAIN: PARLIAMENT].

    [Drop-head title:] ‘An act for repealing the several duties of customs and excise, and granting...

    London, Charles Eyre and Andrew Strahan, 1787.

    Rare first edition of the consolidation act that revolutionised British handling of customs and excise and the problem of smuggling, in line with Adam Smith’s 1776 recommendations.

    £2750

  8. 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

  9. HADLEY, Arthur Twining.

    Economics. An account of the relations between private property and public welfare.

    New York and London, G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1896.

    First edition. ‘In Economics Hadley went further than Marshall by explicitly developing the interrelations between property rights, economic evolution and economic efficiency. Hadley utilized the real world examples of the fisheries and mining to demonstrate the impact of ill-defined property rights...

    £175

  10. HERYNG, Zygmunt.

    Teorja i praktyka ekonomji.

    [Warsaw, G. Centnerszwer], 1897.

    First edition, very rare, of Heryng’s Theory and practice of economics. Zygmunt Heryng, Polish economist and political activist, was deeply concerned with economics as a science. He saw it as a systematic and conscious pursuit of efficiency in resource allocation in relation to targets. One of the...

    £150

  11. HOLLANDER, Jacob Harry.

    Economic Liberalism.

    New York and Cincinnati, The Abingdon Press, [1925].

    First edition, dedicated ‘to the memory of Herbert B. Adams, who first taught me the meaning of liberalism’.

    £50

  12. HURRY, Thomas.

    Tables of interest, from one pound to five hundred millions, for one day; by which the interest for any sum of money...

    [Yarmouth], Printed for the author, and sold by Messrs. Robinson, London; and Downes and March, Yarmouth, 1786.

    One of two editions published in 1786, the other one undated, ESTC does not give any precedence. Tables for calculating interest at a quarter, half, three-quarters, three, four, and five percent; intended as a quick reference for bankers and merchants. Hurry precedes his tables with four pages of example...

    £150

  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. INGALL, Godefroi D., and George WITHERS.

    The Stock Exchange.

    London, Edward Arnold, 1904.

    First edition of Ingall’s and Withers’ instructional overview of the Stock Exchange.

    £100

  15. [ISELIN, ISAAK].

    Träume eines Menschenfreundes. Erster Theil.

    Basel, Johannes Schweighauser, 1776.

    First edition, part one only (very rarely to be found complete with both parts), of the most mature expression of Iselin’s anti-Rousseau republicanism, a social ‘dream’ of great articulation and -arguably- applicability, residing confidently on the borderline between utopia and reformism, and the...

    £150

  16. 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

  17. JACOB, William.

    Report on the Trade in Foreign Corn, and on the Agriculture of the north of Europe … To which is added, an Appendix...

    London, James Ridgway, 1826.

    First edition; two further editions were published the same year. William Jacob (1762?–1851) was appointed to the comptrollership of corn returns in 1822. ‘He was commissioned by the Government in 1825 and 1827 to report on the condition of agriculture in some of the states of northern Europe; the...

    £220

  18. JEVONS, William Stanley.

    ‘Preliminary account of certain logical inventions’, communicated March 19th, 1866 [in: Proceedings...

    London, Longman …, Liverpool, Marples, 1867.

    First edition of the account of Jevons’ communication on the ‘logical abacus’ and the ‘logical machine’, a precursor of his later ‘logical piano’. Jevons had experimented with different forms of teaching aids before creating his logical piano. On this occasion, early in his career, Jevons...

    £350

  19. JEVONS, William Stanley.

    Studies in deductive logic. A manual for students.

    London, Macmillan and Co., 1880.

    First edition. Jevons had been preoccupied with speculations into the science of logic from the early 1860s. In his work Elementary lessons in logic (1870), he had sought to give a clear notion of the results to which the discoveries of Boole and his predecessors necessarily led. The present work consists...

    £175

  20. JEVONS, William Stanley.

    La moneta ed il meccanismo dello scambio.

    Milan, Fratelli Dumolard, 1876.

    First Italian edition of ‘a most readable volume’ (DNB), written quite late in Jevons’s life and published in English the previous year as part of The International Scientific Series. ‘In preparing this volume, I have attempted to write a descriptive essay on the past and present monetary systems...

    £50