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. ANTONIUS de Vercellis. 

    Sermones quadragesimales de XII mirabilibus Christianae fidei excellentiis [with additions by Ludovicus...

    Venice, Johannes and Gregorius de Gregoriis, de Forlivio, [for Alexander Calcedonius], 16 February 1492/93. 

    A remarkable copy of the first edition of Antonius de Vercellis’ sermons, owned and annotated by three contemporary Franciscans, one of whom, Andrea Alamanni, may be the confessor who administered Machiavelli’s last rites. 

    £8500

  2. [ARISTOTLE – ELIAS.]

    Biblioteca Armeno-Georgica. I. Commentarii in Aristotelis Categorias Eliae commentatori adscripti versio...

    St Petersburg, Academiae Imperialis Scientarum, 1911.

    Uncommon edition, published by the Imperial Academy of Sciences in St Petersburg, of the Armenian translation of the commentaries on Aristotle’s Categories by the sixth-century Christian philosopher and commentator Elias.

    £250

  3. Aristotle: From Antiquity to the Modern Era.

    Preface by Martin J. Gross. Essays by Benjamin Morison and Barbara Scalvini.

    Lewes, D. Giles Ltd for the Martin J. Gross Family Foundation, 2021.

    Aristotle’s influence towers over western philosophy and science. His astonishing range and depth – philosophy and logic, the physical and natural sciences, ethics and politics – make him indisputably the most important intellectual figure in the western tradition before the modern age.

    £30

  4. BACON, Francis.

    Opuscula varia posthuma, philosophica, civilia, et theologica, nunc primum edita. Cura & fide Guilielmi Rawley…...

    London, R. Daniel, impensis Octaviani Pulleyn, 1658.

    First edition, second issue (with the imprint R. Daniel, rather than R. Danielis) of this collection of the philosophical, political, and theological writings of Bacon, including numerous essays previously unpublished, and the first appearance of William Rawley’s biographical sketch of the philosopher....

    £1250

  5. BACON, Francis. 

    Francisci Baconi, Baronis de Verulamio, Vice-Comitis Sancti Albani, operum moralium et civilium tomus … cura...

    London, Edward Griffin [and John Haviland] for Richard Whitaker [and John Norton], 1638. 

    First edition, first issue, a copy from the celebrated Albani library: tangible witness to the early and fecund reception of Bacon’s thought in the circles of Galilean science in Italy. 

    £3500

  6. [BALDELLI, Giovanni Battista].

    Elogio di Niccolò Machiavelli.

    Londra, 1794. 

    Uncommon first edition of this speech in praise of Machiavelli, given to the Reale Accademia Fiorentina on 7 August 1794 by the Florentine soldier, politician, and historian Giovanni Battista Baldelli Boni (1766–1831).

    £325

  7. BAUMGARTNER, Reinhard.

    Conclusiones ex universa theologia morali in catholico lyceo Societatis Jesu ad S. Salvatorem Augustae publicae...

    [Augsburg], Joseph Antonius Labhart, [1754].

    Only edition of this attractively printed summary of moral theology, presented as a disputation in the Jesuit college in Augsburg under the supervision of the professor of the subject, Reinhard Baumgartner (1699-1764). Over fifty paragraphs, the reader is offered a concise guide to the operation of conscience,...

    £175

  8. BEAUMONT, Gustave-Auguste de la Bonninière de.

    Autograph letter signed (‘Gustave de Beaumont’) to Sarah Austin.

    Birmingham, 27 June [1835].

    A warm and personal autograph documenting the relationship between Beaumont (1802–1866), prison reformer and travel companion to Alexis de Tocqueville, and one of the most accomplished contemporary catalysts of philosophical exchange, the translator Sarah Austin.

    £350

  9. [BENDISCIOLI, Faustino.]

    Quadro ossia saggio epilogato del Sistema di liberta’ proclamato dai Francesi.

    Milan, Stamperia [dei Patrioti d’Italia] di Strada Nuova, [1799].

    An impassioned tract attacking the claims of a new life of liberty promoted in Europe after the French Revolution, very rarely to be found in any of the three editions published in the same year.

    £200

  10. [BERINGTON, Simon, adapted by Jean-Baptiste DUPUY-DEMPORTES.] 

    Memoires de Gaudence de Luques, prisonnier de l’Inquisition...

    Amsterdam and Leipzig, Arkstée & Merkus, 1754. 

    Second edition of this much expanded and altered translation of Berington’s celebrated utopian novel, Memoirs of Sigr Gaudentio di Lucca (1737). 

    £500

  11. BERKELEY, George.

    Traktat o nachalakh chelovecheskogo znaniia.

    St Petersburg, O. N. Popov, 1905.

    First Russian edition of George Berkeley’s Principles of Human Knowledge, translated by E. Dobolsky and edited by N.G. Dobolsky. The text, on the chief causes of error and difficulty in the sciences, examining the grounds of scepticism, atheism and irreligion, was first published in Dublin in 1710,...

    £500

  12. BERLIN Isaiah.

    The Naiveté of Verdi.

    [New York, The Hudson Review, 1968].

    First edition. Presentations by Berlin are rare, and this one is presumed to be for one of his closest friends, Stephen Spender. Spender had dedicated his World within World (1951) to Berlin, and this inscription most probably refers to Berlin’s forthcoming Four Essays on Liberty (1969) dedicated to...

    £250

  13. [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

  14. BONET, Nicolas.

    Habes Nicholai Bonetti viri p[er]spicacissimi quattuor volumina: Metaphysicam videl[icet] naturale[m] phylosophia[m]...

    Venice, Boneto Locatello for the heirs of Ottaviano Scoto, 1505.

    First collected edition of the works of the French Franciscan Friar Nicolas Bonet (c. 1280–1343), owned and annotated by the Italian historian, biographer, and physician Paolo Giovio (1486–1552).

    £4000

  15. 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

  16. BROUGHAM, Lord Henry.

    Lives of men of letters and science who flourished in the time of George III … with portraits, engraved...

    London, Charles Knight and Co., 1845-47.

    First edition of the first volume (1845), later edition of the second volume (dated 1847, first published 1846) of Brougham’s lives which includes Voltaire, Hume, Davy, Johnson, and Adam Smith to name a few stars in the firmament of the reign of George III, or, in Brougham’s terms, the ‘Augustan...

    £125

  17. BUQUOY, Georg Franz August de Longueval, Freiherr von Vaux, Graf von.

    Anregungen für philosophisch-wissenschaftliche Forschung...

    Leipzig, Breitkopf & Härtel, 1825.

    First edition, rare, of a comprehensive discussion by the author of his personal philosophy, with c. 50 pages of his poetry thrown in at the end for good measure. Samuel Hahnemann refers to the work in Die chronischen Krankheiten (1828–30), calling Buquoy a ‘deep-thinking, many-sided scholar and...

    £950

  18. 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

  19. CARAVADOSSI, Enrico.

    La moderna filosofia convinta d’inganno nelle sue promesse di felicità libertà ed uguaglianza ragionamenti...

    Turin, Giammichele Brioio, 1793.

    First and seemingly only edition of this attack on the false promises of the philosophes, by the Torinese Dominican friar Enrico Caravadossi.

    £395

  20. CARNAP, Rudolf.

    1959 & 1962.

    The first photograph shows Carnap and his wife outside their house and is signed and, in another hand, dated 1959 as having been taken in Santa Monica. The second photograph is of Carnap and is dated 1960, signed and inscribed “Der lieben Erna, in alter Freundschaft”. This refers to Erna Lowenberg...

    £1500