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. MYLIUS, Georg, and Michael HOPF.

    De visitatione ecclesiastica.

    Jena, Tobias Steinmann, 1593.

    First edition, rare, of an early work on the nature, scope, limits and jurisdiction of canonical visitations, the visitationes ecclesiasticae, a key element in the outline of jurisdiction, responsibility and control established by the Catholic Reformation in the last decades of the sixteenth century.

    £200

  2. [NAPLES.]

    Manuale della contribuzione fondiaria compilato per disposizione di S. E. il ministro segretario di stato delle finanze....

    Naples, Tipografia Flautina, 1835.

    First edition. In two parts, the first of which sets out the basis of property taxation, while the second treats the collection and transmission of sums owing, this manual prints the legislation in force in the nearer Neapolitan part (always described as ‘This side of the Lighthouse’, whereas Sicily...

    £200

  3. [NAPOLEON.]

    Napoleone, per la grazia di Dio e per le costituzioni, imperatore de’ Francesi, re d’ Italia, abbiamo decretato,...

    Milan, Stamperia Reale, [1806].

    Scarce decree regarding ‘civil and punitive justice’ issued by Napoleon for the newly created Kingdom of Italy. The text covers, inter alia, judges, tribunals, courts, clerks, attorneys, and ushers.

    £125

  4. [NECKER, Jacques.]

    Eloge de Jean-Baptiste Colbert, Discours qui a remporté le prix de l’Académie Françoise, en 1773.

    Paris, J.B. Brunet, 1773. [bound with:]

    First edition of Necker’s first work. Necker (1732–1804) was the opponent of Turgot (whose position he was to take over in 1777) in action as well as in theory, agreeing with Forbonnais on the side of State-regulation. The encomiastic function of this work, his first book, is in fact a thin cover...

    £750

  5. [NOLHAC, Jean-Baptiste-Marie.]

    Réflexions sur la punition des grands crimes, considérée dans ses rapports avec la morale, extraites...

    Lyon, Louis Perrin, 1836.

    First and only edition, inscribed from the author. An extensive essay against the death penalty, and especially against public executions by Jean-Baptiste-Marie Nolhac (1770-1878) using arguments derived from ‘la digité de la nature humaine et du danger des spectacles sanglants’, written in response...

    £150

  6. [NOVA SCOTIA.]

    A Fair Representation of His Majesty’s Right to Nova-Scotia or Acadie. Briefly stated from the Memorials of the...

    London: Printed by Edward Owen … 1756.

    First edition. ‘Résumé très bien fait de toute la question des frontières de l’Acadie entre la France et l’Angleterre; mais écrit au point de vue de l’Angleterre seulement’ (Gagnon).

    £750

  7. OWEN, John. 

    Epigrammatum Ioan Oweni Cambro-Britanni Oxoniensis.  Editio postrema, correctissima, & posthumis quibusdam adaucta. 

    Breslau, Esaias Fellgiebel, 1658. 

    Scarce Breslau-printed edition of John Owen’s popular Latin epigrams, bound with the first edition of a rare German work providing guidance to princely and noble houses as well as military officials.

    £875

  8. OWEN, Robert.

    Robert Owen’s Journal. Explanatory of the means to well-place, well-employ, and well-educate, the whole population....

    London, James Watson, 1850-1.

    The first 23 issues of Robert Owen’s Journal, which would go on to reach a total of 104 issues ending in October 1852. Almost entirely written by Owen himself, the Journal was the main vehicle of Owenite social and political philosophy, directed to a general readership as well as policy-makers.

    £350

  9. [PADUA.] 

    Statuta Patavina noviter impressa cum diligenti cura et castigatione et cum additionibus necessariis tam provisionum...

    Venice, Girolamo Giberti, 25 January 1528. 

    An attractive volume of statutes relating to the city of Padua in northern Italy, edited by the legal scholar Bartolomeo Abborario, with detailed annotations by a practicing local lawyer. 

    £2500

  10. PALMERSTON, Henry John Temple, third Viscount.

    Signed undertaking to procure an Assignment of Term from the Executors of the Will...

    22 July 1806.

    Document signed by the young Palmerston, arising from the sale of his property at East Sheen, near Mortlake, to Thomas Bernard of Wimpole Street in 1805.

    £675

  11. PALMERSTON, Henry John Temple, Viscount.

    Autograph document signed, approving a plan for a ‘Prison for Boys’ at Durham...

    Whitehall, 2 February 1853.

    A document signed by Lord Palmerston as Home Secretary. He signifies his approval of ‘the annexed plan [no longer present] of a Prison for Boys, on the upper floor of the South Wing of the Gaol for the County of Durham’.

    £400

  12. [PAPAL STATES.]

    Constitutio Sanctissimi Domini Nostri Pii PP. VII. super restauratione regiminis pontificii.

    Rome and Ancona, ‘ex typographia societatis Palmini’, 1800.

    Very rare Ancona printing, in the same year as the original Rome issue, of this Papal decree issued the day after the restoration of the Papal States after two years of the Napoleonic Roman Republic. The fall of the Republic was triggered by the arrival in October 1799 of Neapolitan troops, but...

    £250

  13. [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

  14. [PARIS UPRISING.]

    Votez toujours. Je ferai le reste [Always vote. I’ll do the rest].

    Paris, Comite d'initiative pour un movement revolutionnaire, Imprimerie Robert et Cie, 1968.

    First edition. A striking image of General De Gaulle patting France on the head for obediently voting, a baton cunningly concealed behind him. 1968 was a year when passions were flying high in France. The communist and socialist parties had formed an alliance in February with a view to replacing...

    £550

  15. [PATCH, Richard, defendant.]

    The Trial of Richard Patch, for the wilful Murder of Mr. Isaac Blight, on the 23d of Sept. 1805, at...

    London: Printed, by the express Appointment of the Sheriff, for Edward Jeffery ... Sold by John Walker ... H. D. Symonds ... Harris ... W....

    First edition of this report of a famous trial (there was a rival version from the shorthand of Joseph and W. B. Gurney). Richard Patch (1770?-1806) was an unsuccessful farmer near Exeter who mortgaged his farms in 1803 and departed to London, where he entered the service of Isaac Blight, a ship-breaker...

    £325

  16. 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

  17. PIECK, Henri C.

    10 Dagen Die De Wereld Deden Wankelen.

    Amsterdam, Skovino, 1927.

    A rare lithograph of Pieck’s dramatic illustration for Ten Days that Shook the World (October in English), a silent film commissioned by the Soviet government to commemorate the 10-year anniversary of the October Revolution. Made by the director of Battleship Potemkin (1925), Sergei Eisenstein, the...

    £300

  18. PLINY the Younger.

    Epistolarum libri X & panegyricus.

    Leiden, [Bonaventure & Abraham] Elzevir, 1640.

    First Elzevir edition, handsomely bound for the Irish politician Thomas Wogan Browne.

    £450

  19. POEMS ON AFFAIRS OF STATE:

    from the Time of Oliver Cromwell, to the Abdication of K. James the Second. Written by the greatest...

    Printed in the Year 1702

    Fourth edition of this popular collection of witty verse and political satire, with the second edition of State-Poems continued (1697). Much of the poetry collected here was initially circulated in manuscript because of its political subject matter (which includes the Dutch wars, the Popish Plot, and...

    £425

  20. [PORTUGAL.]

    Centro dei Comunisti. Lotta di classe e potere politico in Portogallo (Quaderni Comunisti).

    Rome, 26 September 1975.


    An historical overview of the Portuguese ‘Carnation Revolution’ of 25 April 1974 and its aftermath, including a reproduction of João Abel Manta’s famous poster showing Vasco Gonçalves, Portugal’s prime minister, with his arms around a member of the MFA (Movimento das Forças Armadas)...

    £100