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. SHKAPSKAIA, Maria Mikhailovna.

    Krov’-ruda [Blood-ore].

    St Petersburg & Berlin, Epokha, 1922.

    First edition of a collection of twenty-one poems by Maria Shkapskaya (1881–1952).

    £300

  2. SIDGWICK, Henry.

    The development of European polity.

    London, Macmillan, 1903.

    First edition, published posthumously and edited by Eleanor Mildred Sidgwick. A collection of a series of lectures delivered by Henry Sidgwick (1838-1900) on the development and evolution of European polity from the earliest known, i.e. Greek and Roman, through to the ‘constitution-making’ 19th century.

    £100

  3. SIMIAND, François (1873-1935), French sociologist and economist.

    A collection of six autograph letters signed (‘François Simiand’...

    Paris, Fontainebleau and unspecified, 1907, 1924, 1925 and undated.

    A collection of letters addressed by Simiand to his ‘cher ami’, identifiable from the contents as the bibliographer, historian, and expert on Saint-Simon, Alfred Pereire (1879-1957), giving an insight into their relationship.

    £100

  4. SINCLAIR, Sir John (1754-1835), agricultural improver and politician.

    Two letters, signed ‘John Sinclair’, to Sir William Hamilton...

    Whitehall, 10 February 1795; Hendersons Hotel, 14 September 1810.

    Two interesting letters written by Sinclair as president of the Board of Agriculture and during his campaign against the 1810 report of the bullion committee.

    £1100

  5. SISMONDI, J. C. L. Simonde de.

    Nouveaux principes d’économie politique, ou de la richesse dans ses rapports avec la population...

    Paris, Delaunay, Treuttel & Wurtz, 1819.

    First edition. ‘A number of concepts and theories that later became important in the history of economics first appeared in the writings of the Swiss economist J. C. L. Simonde de Sismondi … Sismondi developed the first aggregate equilibrium income theory and the first algebraic growth model....

    £850

  6. [SMITH, Adam.] [STEWART, Dugald.]

    Account of the life and writings of Adam Smith, LL.D. From the Transactions of the Royal Society...

    [Edinburgh? N.p. 1794?].

    First separate edition of the first ‘Life’ of Adam Smith, and one of only a handful of copies that were printed for limited private issue. A year later, it was incorporated into the Essays on Philosophical Subjects, and later in editions of the Wealth of Nations. Stewart (1753-1828) read the paper...

    £3750

  7. SMITH, Robert. 

    The Universal Directory for taking alive and destroying Rats, and all other Kinds of four-footed and winged Vermin,...

    London, printed for the author, 1768. 

    First edition of a guide to catching and killing all manner of crawling and flying vermin, illustrated with plates, by the professional exterminator and rat-catcher Robert Smith. 

    £500

  8. SMITH, William.

    The Speeches of Mr. Smith, of South Carolina, delivered in the House of Representatives of the United States, in...

    Philadelphia printed, London reprinted for John Stockdale, 1794.

    First London edition, a rebuff to the punitive anti-British tariffs proposed by the future President James Madison, first printed in Philadelphia in the same year and also reprinted in Edinburgh.

    £175

  9. SMITH, William.

    An authentic account of the life and memoirs of Mr. William Smith, an unfortunate convict, executed at Tyburn,...

    London, for J. Jefferies, 1750.

    The last account of William Smith, son of an Irish vicar, containing the story of how he came to be executed for forgery, in addition to odes written by Smith shortly before his execution.

    £40

  10. [SOUTH AND CENTRAL AMERICAN COINAGE.]

    The King’s Assay Master’s Report, with Tables, shewing the Weights and Fineness of the...

    [London, 1834].

    Three tables of coinage weights and fineness for Mexico, Central America, Bolivia, Peru, Chile, Rio Plata and Columbia, drawn up by Robert and Henry Bingley of the Assay Office ‘to enable Government to form a correct estimate of the value of South American Dollars, as a supply for the military chests...

    £250

  11. SSYL’NYM I ZAKLIUCHENNYM.

    St. Petersburg, [Vol’naia Tipografiia for “Shipovnik”], 1907.

    Rare first edition of this anthology of stories, novellas and poems by Russian authors; a publication intended to raise funds in support of the exiled and imprisoned (as the title translates), the victims of the Tsarist reaction after the 1905 revolution. Among the mainly socially oriented and neo-realistic...

    £350

  12. STABLES, Gordon.

    Hints about home and farm favourites for pleasure, prizes, and profit.

    London and New York, Frederick Warne, 1889.

    First edition of this charming work on the care of pets, with chapters on dogs, cats, poultry, rabbits, goats, ferrets, monkeys, guinea-pigs, ‘fancy rats’, and tortoises, as well as on ‘monkeys as pets’. The book is dedicated to the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

    £250

  13. STACEY, George et al.

    Daguerreotype and ambrotype portraits of Stacey and members of his family.

    London, 1850s.

    A handsome set of photographs of the English Quaker and abolitionist George Stacey (1787-1857), his second wife Mary née Barclay (1797-1876) and members of their extended family, taken by some of the finest portraitists in England at that time.

    £7500

  14. [STANHOPE, Hester Lucy, Lady.]  [MERYON, Charles Lewis (editor).] 

    Memoirs of the Lady Hester Stanhope, as related...

    London, [Frederick Shoberl for] Henry Colburn … 1845. 

    First edition, the entertaining memoirs of the Middle East traveller Lady Hester Stanhope (1776–1839).  Having looked after her uncle, William Pitt, during most of her youth and run his household while he was Prime Minister for the second time, Stanhope left for the Levant in 1810.  She took...

    £650

  15. STATUTA COLLEGII DD.

    Almae Urbis Medicorum ex antiquis Romanorum Pontificum bullis congesta, & hactenùs per Sedem Apostolicam...

    Rome, Printer of the Apostolic Chamber, 1676 [– c.1745].

    The very rare enlarged and updated issue of the statutes of the medical faculty of Rome, a very rare and interesting document on its internal organization.

    £550

  16. STAUNFORD [Stanford], William, Sir.

    Les Plees del Coron, Divisees in Plusors Titles & Comon Lieux. Per Queux Home Pluis Redement...

    [London], Richard Tottell, 1583.

    The definitive edition, and that owned by Thomas Jefferson, of the first book devoted entirely to criminal law. First published posthumously in 1557 and based on Bracton and the Year Books, Les Plees deals in turn with offences, jurisdiction, appeals, indictments and defences. The third...

    £3000

  17. STEPNIAK, Sergey. 

    דאָס אינטערערדישע רוסלאַנד … איבערזעצט פון א. פרומקין
    [Dos...

    New York, Maks N. Maisel, 1921. 

    Scarce first American edition in Yiddish of Stepniak’s first and most influential book.  Written in Italian during exile in Switzerland following his assassination of Nikolai Mezentsov, chief of Alexander II’s secret police, Underground Russia was published in 1882 and translated into...

    £150

  18. STEPNIAK, Sergius [pseudonym for: Sergius Mikhailovich Kravchinskii].

    Podziemna Rosja. Obrazki z przeszłości młodej Rosji.

    Lviv, [ printers of the Dziennika Polskiego] for Gubrinowicz & Schmidt, 1897.

    Extremely rare first edition in Polish, anonymously translated and printed in nowadays Ukraine, of Stepniak’s most successful, translated and influential book.

    £100

  19. STEUART, Sir James Denham.

    The works, political, metaphisical, and chronological... now first collected by General Sir James Steuart,...

    London, T. Cadell and W. Davies, 1805.

    First and only edition of Steuart’s collected works, volumes I to IV containing the Inquiry into the principles of political Oeconomy, volume V containing Steuart’s various writings on money and coinage, volume VI his philosophical writings, together with anecdotes of his life.

    £4750

  20. STEUART, Walter (of Pardovan?).

    ‘The ABC with the Shorter Catechisme appointed by the general Assembly to be a Directory for...

    Edinburgh. Written by Walter Stewart. 1714[–15].

    A very attractive calligraphic manuscript catechism, largely reproducing the very rare edition printed in Edinburgh in 1696 (NLS and Bodley only in ESTC). It was apparently produced in November–December 1714, and the imitation of both blackletter and roman type is consistently excellent throughout....

    £2500