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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.

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  1. [MAGDALEN CHAPEL.]

    The Hymns Anthems and Tunes with the Ode used at the Magdalen Chapel set for the Organ Harpsichord, Voice German-Flute...

    London, Printed for Longman and Broderip … [1780?].

    Two rare later editions of the Magdalen Chapel hymnbook.

    £2000

  2. [MAGDALEN CHAPEL.]

    The Hymns, Anthems & Tunes with the Ode used at the Magdalen Chapel set for the Organ, Harpsichord, Voice, German-Flute,...

    London, Printed for C. and S. Thompson … [1770?]

    First edition thus, very rare, of this Magdalen Chapel Hymnbook, with a total of thirty-eight tunes: twenty-four hymns, three anthems, nine psalms, ‘The Wish’ and ‘The Ode’.

    £1750

  3. MAGGI, P. 

    Clef de la grammaire française. 

    York, ‘chez l’Auteur … de l’imprimerie de W. Alexander et Fils’, [not before 1823]. 

    First and only edition, very rare, of this answer-book to The French Master, or Elementary Grammar by the York language-teacher Maggi. 

    £250

  4. MAGNA CARTA.

    Magna Charta: or, the Great Charter of King John; to which are added, the Declaration of the Estates of the Kingdom...

    Glasgow: Printed by E. Miller. Sold by James Duncan, Junr. James Steel, and Walter Duncan, Booksellers. [c. 1810]

    First edition thus, rare. COPAC and OCLC show Glasgow only.

    £75

  5. MAINE DE BIRAN. [MARIE FRANÇOIS PIERRE GONTHIER DE BIRAN.]

    Influence de l’Habitude sur la Faculté de Penser.

    Paris, Henrichs, 1803.

    First edition of Maine de Biran’s first major work, in which he draws a distinction between what he calls passive habits, i.e. sensations and impressions which become dulled with repetition, and active habits, i.e. those which are conscious, and willed. “The effect of this, which was borne out by...

    £2000

  6. MALCOLM, Alexander.

    A Treatise of Musick, speculative, practical and historical. Containing an explication of the philosophical...

    London, J. Osborn and T. Longman, F. Fayram, and E. Symon, 1730.

    First London edition of the first history of music in English by a British author; it is a reissue of the Edinburgh-printed first edition of 1721 with a cancel title-page and the dedication removed.

    £1100

  7. MALTHUS, Thomas Robert.

    Principles of political economy considered with a view to their practical application.

    London, Murray, 1820.

    First edition. The Principles were developed through controversy with Ricardo, especially with regard to the theory of value, but the origins of the essay are in the Essay, which constituted Malthus’s earliest writings on prices, income and savings. The difference that emerges between...

    £1400

  8. [MALTHUS, Thomas Robert].

    Art. I - Essay on Political Economy. Supplement to the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Vol. VI. Part I. Edinburgh....

    The Quarterly Review Vol. XXX No. LX, January 1824, pp. 298-334.

    First edition. A review by Thomas Malthus of John Ramsay McCulloch’s famous essay on political economy.

    £100

  9. MANLEY, Mrs. [Delarivier]. 

    The Power of Love: in seven Novels viz. I. The fair Hypocrite. II. The Physician’s Stratagem....

    London, Printed for John Barber … and John Morphew … 1720.

    First edition, apparently a presentation copy, of Delarivier Manley’s last work of prose, a collection of seven amorous novellas partly derived from William Painter’s Palace of Pleasure (1566), ‘adding divers new Incidents’, and supplemented by several original compositions. Historically...

    £2500

  10. [MARABOTTA, Cattaneo.] 

    Vita della serafica S. Caterina da Genova. 

    Genoa, Tipografia Frugoni, 1832. 

    Rare first edition thus, an attractive nineteenth-century reprint of Marabotta’s biography of Saint Catherine of Genoa (1447–1510), first published in 1737, the date of her canonisation.  Catherine was known for her writings on mysticism and for her work with the poor and sick, notably during...

    £185

  11. MARCHESINI, Marcello.

    Saggio d’economia politica, o sia Riflessioni sullo spirito della legislazione relativamente all’agricoltura,...

    Napoli, Vincenzo Orsino, 1793.

    Very rare first and only edition of a book on economic and social policy by Marcello Marchesini, a scholar from Istria who, having been trained in Venice, took the chair of Political Economy in Naples after Genovesi. Marchesini declares in the title that his book should be regarded as a ‘Spirit of...

    £700

  12. MARSHALL, Alfred.

    Official papers.

    London, Macmillan for the Royal Economic Society, 1926.

    First collected edition of all the written memoranda and oral evidence Marshall prepared on economic questions for government departments and official enquiries, with the exception of his work on the Labour Commission. The collection was edited by Keynes, who provides a preface: ‘generally speaking,...

    £150

  13. MARTINEAU, Harriet.

    British Rule in India; a historical Sketch …

    London: Smith, Elder and Co … 1857.

    First edition. Martineau wrote regularly for the Daily News from 1851-66, and produced nearly 1600 leaders in which she addessed international issues such as the American Civil War, and Britain’s position in the West Indies, Ireland and India. Her articles on India contributed to this work,...

    £150

  14. [MARTINI, Ferdinand].

    Breife. Aus dem Englischen übersetzt.

    Soröe 1768, gedruckt bey Jonas Lindgreen, Ritterlich Akademischer Buchdrucker.

    First edition of a rare, radical indictment of serfdom in Denmark, ostensibly ‘translated from the English’.

    £750

  15. MARX, Karl.

    W kwestii Żydowskiej.

    Warsaw, [“Monografia”] for Instytut Wydawniczy “Renaissance”, 1938.

    First edition to be printed in Poland, the second in Polish (first, London, 1896) of Marx’s controversial article Zur Judenfrage ('On the Jewish Question'), which appeared first in 1844 in the Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher.

    £280

  16. MARZAGLIA, Gaetano.

    Fascetto di pratiche matematiche spiegate alle persone popolari per uso del comercio umano, e civile, in questa...

    Verona, Dionisio Ramanzini, 1780.

    A lovely copy of the second edition, considerably augmented from the first of 1754, of this book of applied mathematical problems by the Veronese mathematician Gaetano Marzaglia (or Marcegaglia, 1716–1787), heavily influenced by the work of Wolff, who provides the motto to the book, and whose works...

    £650

  17. [MASCHERANA, Girolamo.]

    Concordia tra la società e la religione ossia Difesa del culto cattolico contro chi lo calunnia in contrasto...

    Milan, Cesare Orena nella stamperia Malatesta, 1798.

    Rare second edition, printed in the same year as the equally rare first, of this curious defence of religion in the light of the constitution of the Cisalpine Republic, in which the author seeks to demonstrate the compatibility of Catholicism with the Enlightenment ideals of the French Revolution and...

    £375

  18. MASTAI FERRETTI, Conte Paolino.

    Notizie storiche delle accademie d’Europa, con una relazione piu’ diffusa dell’accademia...

    Rome, I Lazzarini, 1792.

    Only edition, and a lovely copy, of this finely printed history of the academies of Europe, produced in honour of Pope Pius VI’s reestablishment of, and support for the Accademia nobile ecclesiastica (now the Pontifical Ecclesiastic Academy), which had been founded in 1701, was suppressed in 1764,...

    £850

  19. MAURIZI, Maria Luisa.

    Morali e divote riflessioni a tutti utilissime e specialmente alle persone claustrali scritte dalla serva...

    Rome, Tipografia della Pia Unione alle Terme, 1833.

    Uncommon first edition of this collection of meditations on the religious life, by the Roman nun Maria Luisa Maurizi (born Giacinta Gertrude Maurizi, 1770–1831), and published posthumously at the behest of her spiritual director, Agostino Romagnoli.

    £150

  20. MCCULLOCH, John Ramsay.

    Principes d’économie politique suivis de quelques recherches relatives à leur application et d’un...

    Paris, Guillaumin et Cie, 1851.

    First and only complete French translation, an association copy signed by the translator for the historian and member of the Académie française Pierre-François Tissot, and afterwards in the library of the economist and statist Michel Chevalier, who like Tissot held a chair at the Collège de France.

    £300