Advanced search

Human Sciences

Contact Edmund Brumfitt, 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.

Sort by
Author
Price
Date
Title

  1. [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). The Memoirs enjoyed immense popularity, undergoing at least twelve eighteenth-century editions in English and contemporary translations...

    £650

  2. BERKELEY, George.

    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,...

    £1750

  3. BERLIN Isiah.

    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...

    £750

  4. BERRYAT, Jean, et al., editors.

    Receuil de Mémoires, ou Collection de Pièces Académiques, concernant la Médicine, l’Anatomie...

    Dijon, Auxerre, Paris and Liège, F. Desventes, F. Fournier, et al., 1754-86.

    The scarce first collected edition of these scientific papers from all over Europe (lacking only the last five volumes of the Partie Française), including among its contributors such famous names as Huygens, Leeuwenhoek, Hevelius, De La Hire, Mariotte, Réaumur, La Condamine, Haller, Maupertuis, Boyle,...

    £6000

  5. [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

  6. 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),...

    £250

  7. 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

  8. [BIANCHI, Isidoro.]

    Compendio della vita e miracoli della B. Elisabetta Picenardi del Terz’Ordine de’ Servi di M.V. E del culto...

    Cremona, per il Feraboli, 1805.

    Second edition (first Rome 1804) of this account of the life and miracles of Elisabetta Picenardi (1428–1468) of the Servite Order, who was beatified in November 1804 after Pope Pius VII issued confirmation of her local cultus. The work is attributed to the Camaldolese monk Isidoro Bianchi (1731–1808)....

    £350

  9. BIRKETT, Dorothy Nina Forbes (editor).

    Hunting Lays and Hunting Ways: An Anthology of the Chase … with fourteen Illustrations...

    London, John Lane at the Bodley Head, 1924.

    First edition of Lady Birkett’s collection of poetry and prose relating to fox-hunting, handsomely printed and generously illustrated.

    £75

  10. 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

  11. [BLADEN, Martin.]

    An impartial enquiry into the management of the war in Spain, by the ministry at home, and into the conduct of...

    London, John Morphew, 1712.

    First edition of this examination of the British participation in the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–1714) down to 1710, with particular emphasis on the years 1703–7. The author, Martin Bladen (1680–1746), ‘matriculated at St John’s College, Cambridge, in 1697 and in the same year was...

    £425

  12. BLANQUI, Jérôme Adolphe, l’Ainé.

    Histoire de l’économie politique en Europe, depuis les anciens jusqu’à nos jours, suivie...

    Paris, Guillaumin, 1837.

    First edition of ‘the first major history of political economy’ (The New Palgrave). Blanqui (1798–1854) taught at the Institution Massin, where he came into contact with J. B. Say, who was greatly impressed by him. In 1833, he succeeded Say as holder of the chair of political and industrial economy...

    £300

  13. BLENCOWE, Robert Willis.

    Sydney Papers, consisting of a journal of the Earl of Leicester, and original letters of Algernon Sydney....

    London, John Murray, 1825.

    First edition, a presentation copy, of this collection of documents relating to the life and trial of the seventeenth century political philosopher and republican Algernon Sydney, edited by the antiquarian Robert Willis Blencowe (1791-1874).

    The bulk of the volume contains the journal of the...

    £150

  14. BODEMER, Heinrich.

    Die Wirkungen der Creditpapiere in Bezug die Vehmehrung der Banken in Deutschland.

    Leipzig, Heinrich Hubner, 1853.

    First edition of a rare German treatise on banking, money, paper money and credit. Bodemer argues for a bettering and widening of credit in Prussia at a crucial time of its economic development, where both production and trade required ever more more advanced, unified and modern financial tools.

    £185

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

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

    London: Printed for A. Millar … 1749.

    First authorised edition, following a suppressed piracy by Pope. Written in 1738 for the Prince of Wales, the manuscript had been 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,...

    £375

  16. [BOLZANO, Bernard].

    Bolzano’s Wissenschaftslehre und Religionswissenschaft in einer beurtheilenden Uebersicht.

    Sulzbach, J.E von Seidels, 1841.

    First edition of this critical summary of the greatest works of Bolzano, The Theory of Science and The Science of Religion, first published in four-volume sets in 1837 and 1834, copiously illustrated with citations from the original texts.

    £600

  17. 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.

    £400

  18. BOOTH, Charles.

    In darkest England and the way out.

    London, Salvation Army, [1890.]

    First edition. ‘In 1890, the same year that Stanley published In Darkest Africa, Booth published In Darkest England. In this book he analysed the causes of pauperism and vice of the period, and proposed a remedy by ten expedients. These included land settlement, emigration, rescue work among prostitutes...

    £250

  19. BOSE, Johann Andreas.

    Introductio generalis in Notitiam Rerum publicarum Orbis Universi. Accedunt eiusdem Dissertationes de Statu...

    Jenae, J. Bielki, 1676.

    First edition of a pioneering work of statistics and rare Americanum, by the philosopher and historian Johann Andreas Bose (1624–1674). Bose’s crucial intuition as a student of human societies lies in his advocacy of interdisciplinary investigations. His work ‘on all the states in the world’...

    £3000

  20. BOURGOING, Jean François, Baron de.

    Tableau de l’Espagne moderne . . . seconde edition, corrigée et considérablement augmentée,...

    Paris, for the author, Du Pont, Devaux and Regnault, 1797.

    Second edition, considerably expanded with respect to the first following Bourgoing’s second journey to Spain in 1792–3; the first edition had appeared in 1788 (as Nouveau voyage en Espagne). Bourgoing’s extensive work contains much on Spanish culture, industry, commerce and trade.

    £1400