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. [BERRY, Robert.]

    Scots Law: manuscript lecture notes from the University of Glasgow.

    Glasgow, 1877-8.

    A very comprehensive and legible set of manuscript notes from the lectures on Scots law given at Glasgow in the Martinmas and Candlemas terms of the academic year 1877-8 by Robert Berry (1825–1903), Regius Professor of Law at the University from 1867 to 1887. The course of study was an intensive...

    £400

  2. 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

  3. BEVER, Thomas.

    The History of the legal polity of the Roman State; and of the rise, progress, and extent of the Roman laws.

    London, Strahan and Cadell, 1781.

    Sole edition of a legal history conceived along the lines of Gibbon’s history, an account that was meant to furnish leaders of the emerging British Empire with a helpful knowledge of the past from the perspective of the evolution of legal systems.

    £1500

  4. BLACKERBY, Samuel. Nathaniel BLACKERBY, editor.

    The First Part of the Justice of the Peace his Companion; or, a Summary of all...

    London, E. & R. Nutt and R. Gosling for J. Walhoe, 1734.

    Later editions of this important source of information on crime and the work of the magistracy in early seventeenth-century England. Samuel Blackerby’s Justice of the Peace his Companion … was first published by Walhoe in 1711, and appeared under the title Cases in Law wherein Justices of Peace...

    £450

  5. [MARLBOROUGH, John Churchill, Duke of.]

    Tract volume of five rare works (three not in the British Library) relating...

    London, 1695–1706.

    Five works, 4to, bound together in nineteenth-century half calf with marbled sides; first and last pages of all works dusty; inscription of the sixth Duke of Marlborough dated 1847, bookplate with the Marlborough arms.

    £3850

  6. [BODONI.] 

    D. Francesco Giacinto Rovero Cavaliere di Piea, e della Sagra Religione, ed Ordine Militare de’ Santi Morizio, e...

    Saluzzo, Giovandomenico Bodoni, [December 1783]. 

    Very rare survival, apparently unrecorded, of this bill of public order laws printed by Giovandomenico Bodoni at Saluzzo. 

    £1250

  7. [BOLINGBROKE, Henry St John, Viscount].

    Letters, on the Spirit of Patriotism: on the Idea of a Patriot King: and on the State of...

    London: Printed for A. Millar … 1749.

    First authorised edition. Written in 1738 for the Prince of Wales, the manuscript was then entrusted to Pope who had it printed, to Bolingbroke’s fury: he bought up the entire edition and had it burnt in October 1744 (only two imperfect copies survive, at the British Library and Princeton). He later...

    £375

  8. BONACINA, Martino.

    Tractationes Variae ... Prima ... De Simonia. Secunda, De Alienatione bonorum ecclesiasticorum. Tertia, De Largitione...

    Venice, Giunta, 1628.

    Rare early edition of six legal tracts by Bonacina, one of the foremost jurists, theologians and moralists of his age. Bonacina was to die suddenly three years later, immediately after having been appointed Nuncio of Urban VIII at the court of the Emperor.

    £275

  9. BONAPARTE, Jerôme-Napoléon.

    Letter signed as governor of Les Invalides to the members of the Conseil d’administration de la...

    Paris, Hôtel des Invalides, 16 February 1849.

    Jérôme-Napoléon Bonaparte (1784–1860) was the youngest brother of Napoleon I and reigned as Jerome Napoleon I, King of Westphalia, between 1807 and 1813. He became governor of Les Invalides when his nephew Prince Louis Napoleon became president of the second French Republic in 1848.

    £300

  10. BOSWELL, James.

    A Letter to the People of Scotland, on the alarming Attempt to infringe the Articles of Union, and introduce a...

    London: Printed for Charles Dilly … 1785.

    First edition of Boswell’s second Letter to the People of Scotland, written to oppose a bill in Parliament for reducing the number of the Lords of Session from fifteen to ten. Boswell, who believed that this attack on the highest court in Scotland for civil causes was a direct infringement of the Articles...

    £1500

  11. BRADLAUGH, Charles.

    Catalogue of the library of the late Charles Bradlaugh.

    London, Mrs H. Bradlaugh Bonner, 1891.

    Only edition of this private production, printed by Bradlaugh’s daughter, Hypatia, at the press of her husband, a printer, ‘not merely to publish a descriptive list of the volumes contained in the library in order to facilitate their sale, but to make somewhat of a memento of Mr Bradlaugh himself’...

    £100

  12. BUONACCORSI, Biagio, and Niccolò VALORI. 

    Diario de’ successi piu importanti seguiti in Italia, & particolarmente in...

    Florence, Filippo & Jacopo Giunta, 1568. 

    First edition of an insider account of Medici politics by Biagio Buonaccorsi (1472–1522), colleague and confidant of Machiavelli, bound with the first edition of Malespini’s history of Florence and owned by Claude-Enoch Virey, secretary to Henri II de Bourbon, Prince de Condé. 

    £1000

  13. BURLAMAQUI, Jean Jacques.

    Principes du droit naturel.

    Geneva, Barrillot & fils, 1747.

    First edition of the first work, bound with a very early edition of the second work. The Droit politique was first published posthumously in 1751 as the necessary companion to the Droit naturel; when in contemporary bindings, they are sometimes found together in various combinations...

    £2500

  14. 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

  15. 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

  16. [CATHERINE II, Empress of Russia].

    Le Czarewitz Chlore. Conte Moral. De main impériale & de maitresse.

    Berlin, Fréderic Nicolaï, Lausanne, François Grasset, 1782.

    First edition, very rare, of a speculum principis of the Enlightenment, by one of the time’s most enlightened monarchs. Le Czarewitz Chlore is a moral tale written by Catherine II of Russia for her two grandsons, the future Alexander I and his younger brother Constantine, while their father and mother,...

    £3000

  17. [CAVALLERI, Paolo Agostino.]

    Lettera dall’Adriatico del signor Antonio Bianchi sopra l’opera de’diritti dell’uomo del sig....

    Rome, Giovanni Zempel, 1792 (colophon 1793).

    First edition, uncommon, of this counter-revolutionary polemic written in response to Spedalieri’s I diritti dell’uomo of the previous year and attributed to the Barnabite Paolo Agostino Cavalleri (1742-1803). Spedalieri had attempted a Catholic response to the revolutionary ideas of the rights of...

    £375

  18. [CERI, Giovacchino Domenico.]

    Prodromo all’estirpazione del pirronismo dalla ragion civile d’Italia.

    [Florence?] 1769.

    Only edition, uncommon, of this analysis of the political and legal organisation of Italy, and proposals for its improvement, by the Prato lawyer and historian Giovacchino Domenico Ceri (1734–1798).

    £375

  19. CHEVRET, Jean.

    Épitre a l’humanité et a la patrie en particulier, sur le bon ordre & l’idée de la véritable liberté. Suivie...

    [Paris?], au temple de la vérité, 1789.

    A good copy of this rare essay on the workings of society and the conditions required for human flourishing, by the controversialist and librarian Jean Chevret (1747-1820). After a brief letter addressed to humanity in general and France (even, perhaps, Chevret’s own home town of Meulan) in particular,...

    £275

  20. [CITY OF LONDON.]

    An Act for the better regulating the Nightly-Watch, and Beadles within the City of London, and Liberties thereof;...

    [London, 1737].

    Rare first edition of an act providing for the ‘raising and levying of Monies’ for the employment of night-watchmen in the City of London. ‘The said Constables, shall … use their best Endeavours, to prevent Fires, Murders, Burglaries, Robberies, and other Outrages, and Disorders …’. The act...

    £150