Human Sciences
Contact Jonathan Harrison or Alfred Pasternack
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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[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
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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
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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
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BORLASE, William.
The natural History of Cornwall: The Air, Climate, Waters, Rivers, Lakes, Sea, and Tides; Of the Stones, Semimetals,...
Oxford, W. Jackson for the Author, and London, W. Sandby, 1758.
First edition of Borlase’s monumental survey of Cornwall. Though aged over sixty at the time of publication, William Borlase (1696 – 1772), rector of Ludgvan, toured central and eastern Cornwall between 1752 and 1757, gathering material for his Natural History. The result, though less...
£750
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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
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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’...
£500
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BRAND-HOLLIS, Thomas [and John DISNEY (editor)].
Memoirs of Thomas Hollis…
London, Gillet, 1808.
First edition of a privately printed memoir of Thomas Brand of the Hyde, who assumed the name Brand-Hollis on inheriting the Dorset estates (and library and collection of sculpture) of his friend the ‘Republican’ Thomas Hollis, the Whig bibliophile. The author, John Disney, a close friend...
£450
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BRAY, Charles.
The philosophy of necessity; or, the law of consequences; as applicable to mental, moral, and social science.
London, Longman et al, 1841.
First edition. Bray (1811-84), a Coventry ribbon manufacturer, was converted to phrenology by George Combe, with whom he formed a close association; he was also close in early life to George Eliot and to Herbert Spencer. The Philosophy of Necessity was published during the Chartist ferment, when Bray...
£450
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[Brewer, George].
The Siamese tales: being a collection of stories told to the son of the Mandarin Sam-Sib, for the purpose of...
London, Vernor & Hood and Champante & Whitrow, 1796.
First edition of an anonymously published collection of ‘Siamese tales’, written as fables to increase their appeal to children. In the Introduction, the author states that the purpose of these supposedly translated tales is to ‘promote the love of virtue through the medium of fiction’ (p. 1)....
£950
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[BROGGIA, Carlo Antonio].
Memoria ad oggetto di varie politiche ed economiche ragioni e temi di utili raccordi che in causa del...
[Colophon: Naples, n. p., 15 February 1754].
Rare first and only edition of this fierce attack against the ministers of Palermo, criticising their acts. The work caused the author to be exiled from Palermo in the year of publication. Broggia, a Neapolitan merchant, is credited as being one of the true developers of a pure theory of taxation. Schumpeter...
£250
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BROGGI, Ugo.
Die Axiome der Wahrscheinlichkeitsrechnung.
Göttingen, Dieterischen Universitäts-Buchdruckerei, 1907.
Rare first edition of this doctoral dissertation on the solution of Hilbert’s sixth problem, written under the supervision of David Hilbert. The problem posed tried to axiomatize those branches of science in which mathematics is prevalent. Broggi here aims to establish a system with which to prove...
£375
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[BROOME, Ralph.]
The Letters of Simpkin the Second, poetic recorder, of all the proceedings, upon the trial, of Warren Hastings,...
London, Stockdale, 1789.
Third edition, first published 1788, of this satirical commentary of the trial of Warren Hastings (1732–1818), the former governor of British Bengal who was impeached and tried for corruption. Massively anti-Hastings, Broome begins with a poetic tribute to the managers of the impeachment, and...
£100
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BROUGHAM, Henry.
Present state of the law. The speech of Henry Brougham, Esq., M.P., in the House of Commons, on Thursday, February...
London, Henry Colburn, 1828.
First edition of the famous speech by the future Whig Lord Chancellor Henry Brougham on the necessity of a Royal Commission to investigate the state of the English legal system, which was to set in train the fundamental reforms that were enacted in the second third of the nineteenth century. Lasting...
£250
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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...
£250
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BROWNING, Elizabeth Barrett.
Poems before Congress …
London: Chapman and Hall … 1860.
First edition of a slender collection of seven poems on the cause of Italian independence, and one attacking slavery in the United States (‘A Curse for a Nation’). The Congress of the title had been planned for Paris in January 1860, but Austria withdrew on learning that Napoleon III meant to use...
£200
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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
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[BURDETT.] COBBETT, William.
Cobbett’s remarks on Sir F. Burdett’s Letter to his constituents …. Taken from the Weekly political...
London, T. Broom, [1810.]
First separate edition. Cobbett's Political Register of 24 March 1810 reprinted The Address of Sir Francis Burdett to his Constituents and prefaced it with a robust defence of Burdett. Here Cobbett's defence appears along with the warrant for Burdett's arrest and his letter challenging...
£200
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[BURDETT, Sir Francis.]
Parliamentary reform. A Full and accurate report of the proceedings at the meeting held at the Crown...
London, J. H. Hart, 1809.
First edition, the report of the famous Reform Dinner of 1809. Others on the committee of the ‘Friends of Reform’ included Thomas Brand, Capel Lofft, John Cartwright, and William Frend; 1200 tickets were issued, and were being touted for 5 guineas. A well-known satirical engraving of the event...
£175
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BURDETT, Sir Francis.
Speech … at the Crown and Anchor tavern, July 31, 1810, on the occasion of dining with his constituents,...
London, W. Burton for J. Barker, 1810.
First edition. ‘I consider this as one of the proudest and happiest moments of my life …’
£150
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[BURDETT, Sir Francis - Trial of.]
The Trial of Sir Francis Burdett, Bart., at Leicester, on Thursday, March 23d,...
London, William Hone, 1820.
First edition of Burdett’s trial for seditious libel after the publication of his Letter to the Electors of Westminster. In response to the Peterloo Massacre of August 1819, Sir Francis Burdett had published a letter calling on the electors of Westminster to ‘join the general voice’...
£150