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. MILLAR, John.

    Observations concerning the distinction of ranks in society. Under the following heads: 1. Of the ranks and condition...

    London, Murray, 1773.

    Second London edition, ‘greatly enlarged’, first published 1771. The first section of Millar’s book is a study of matrilineal ‘savage’ societies, in which early social development counts most when it comes to kinship with the mother, is remarkably prescient (see Morgan, Systems)....

    £1450

  2. MILL, James.

    Elements of political economy … Second edition, revised and corrected.

    London, Baldwin, Cradock, and Joy, 1824.

    Second edition of what Palgrave terms ‘Mill’s masterpiece’, extensively revised with alterations ‘too numerous to be specified’. This copy with a presentation inscription to Thomas Love Peacock signed ‘the author’.

    £1250

  3. MILL, James.

    Elementi di economia politica di G. Mill ... versione Italiana corredata di note.

    Naples, Stamperia Francese, 1826.

    Very rare first edition in Italian of Mill’s Elements of political economy (1821), unattributed so far, but most likely the work of the Neapolitan economist and philosopher Francesco Fuoco, as established by the studies by Prof. F. Di Battista, who was kind enough to share his findings with us.

    £975

  4. MILL, John Stuart.

    A szabadságról. Fordította és az előszót írta Kállay Béni.

    Béni. Pest, Ráth Mór, 1867.

    Extremely rare (1 copy worldwide) first Hungarian edition of John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty. This translation, published in Pest, came out as the Habsburg Emperor accepted the consequences of a twenty-years-long strife for autonomy and rights on the part of Hungarian subjects. Mill’s anti-paternalistic...

    £975

  5. MILL, John Stuart.

    A szabadságról ... Angolból forditotta és az elöszót irta Kállay Béni.

    Pest, Kiadja Ráth Mór, 1867.

    First Hungarian edition of John Stuart Mill’s great essay On Liberty, with a lengthy introduction by the Austro-Hungarian statesman Béni Kállay (1839–1903). First published in 1859, Mill’s vastly influential essay was dedicated to his wife Harriet who had provided the stimulus for...

    £450

  6. MILL, John Stuart, and Edward Livingston YOUMANS.

    Новѣйшее образованiе: его истинныя цѣли и требованiя....

    St Petersburg, Izdanie “Russkoi knizhnoi torgovli”, 1867.

    First edition in Russian of these two works, published in the original that same year.

    £100

  7. 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

  8. [MILL, John Stuart, witness].

    Report from the Select Committee on the Income and Property Tax; together with the Proceedings of...

    [London], Ordered by the House of Commons, to be Printed, 1 August 1861.

    First edition. This is the concluding report of the Commons Select Committee that had been responsible for investigating possible modifications to income tax policy. John Stuart Mill appeared before the Committee on the 18 June 1861, where he reiterated his central belief that the current system of income...

    £175

  9. MOHEAU.

    Recherches et considérations sur la population de la France …

    Paris, Moutard, 1778.

    First edition. This work is held in high regard by both McCulloch and Peuchet, though when first published it received little acknowledgement, being attributed to Baron Auget de Montyon, who assisted in the work and to whom Moheau was secretary. The first part contains statistical tables; the second...

    £250

  10. 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

  11. [NATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH.]

    Regularization of Business Investment. A conference of the Universities-National Bureau...

    Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1954.

    First edition. ‘The question this book raises and helps to answer is whether the entire responsibility for preventing the next depression is to be left to government, or whether a leading role can be assumed by private enterprise, through regularization of investment expenditures. Twenty-six...

    £120

  12. NIEHANS, Jürg.

    Der Gedanke der Autarkie im Merkantilismus von einst und im Neomerkantilismus von gestern.

    Zürich, H. Girsberger, 1945.

    First edition of Niehan’s work on the idea of self-sufficiency in the age of Mercantilism, published as volume 37 of the series Zürcher Volkswirtschaftlicje Forschungen, under the editorship of M. Saitzew. Niehans (1920-2007), a distinguished economist, taught at the Universities of Zurich, Johns...

    £40

  13. NIEUHOF, Jan, and Georg HORN (translator). 

    Legatio Batavica ad magnum Tartariae chamum Sungteium, modernum Sinae...

    Amsterdam, Jacob van Meurs, 1668. 

    First edition in Latin, beautifully illustrated, of Nieuhof’s account of his travels in China between 1655 and 1657, one of the most important early modern non-Jesuit studies. 

    £5000

  14. NIEUHOF, Jean, and Jean LE CARPENTIER (translator). 

    L’ambassade de la compagnie orientale des provinces unies...

    Leiden, Jacob de Meurs, 1665. 

    Lavishly illustrated first French edition of Nieuhof’s travels through China from 1655 to 1657. 

    £3500

  15. [OSBORNE, Francis.]

    Historical memoires on the reigns of Queen Elizabeth, and King James.

    London: Printed by T. Grismond, and are to be sold by T. Robinson … in Oxon. 1658.

    First edition of Osborne’s history of the reigns of Elizabeth I and James VI and I, two exemplary leaders of the Protestant English cause, with which Osborne was much taken in his works.

    £475

  16. PAGNINI, Giovanni Francesco; Francesco BALDUCCI PEGOLOTTI; Giovanni da UZZANO.

    Della decima e di varie altre gravezze imposte dal...

    Lisbona e Lucca, (vols. 3-4: e si vende da Giuseppe Bouchard librajo francese in Firenze), 1765-66.

    First edition, scarce on the market, of a highly important work in the history of economics and world trade. Pagnini (1714-89) worked in the financial department of the Tuscan government and published translations of several of Locke’s works. The Della decima is his most important work, giving ‘a...

    £5500

  17. [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

  18. [PASCOLI, Livio.] ‘Vilio LOCASPI’.

    Del modo di mantenere abolita la mendicità, discorso familiare.

    Verona, Mainardi, 1817.

    Only edition, very rare, of this proposal for the abolition of begging, and of poverty more broadly, by the poet and essayist Livio Pascoli.

    £285

  19. 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

  20. PICK, G. Vesian.

    Digest of political economy: the principles of John Stuart Mill.

    London, Swan Sonnerschein & Co., 1893.

    Second edition (first 1892) of Pick’s epitome of J.S. Mill’s Principles of political economy. Stating his aim as to ‘present a bird’s-eye view of Political Economy’, with a secondary intent of being used by students as a companion volume to the treatise itself, Pick aims to bring a new simplicity...

    £100