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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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
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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
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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
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[BODONI.]
D. Francesco Giacinto Rovero Cavaliere di Piea, e della Sagra Religione, ed Ordine Militare de’ Santi Morizio, e...
Saluzzo, Giovandomenico Bodoni, [December 1783].
Very rare survival, apparently unrecorded, of this bill of public order laws printed by Giovandomenico Bodoni at Saluzzo.
£1250
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[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
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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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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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BOUTROLLE, J.G.
Le parfait bouvier, ou instruction concernant la connoissance des boeufs & vaches, leur âge, maladies & symptômes,...
Rouen, the widow Besongne and J.J. Besongne the younger, [1766?].
Early (first?) edition of one of the most successful French veterinary guides. With the majority of early veterinary literature focused on the most highly prized animal, the horse, the present text is one of the few to address primarily the care of bovines, with sections also on pigs, sheep, and...
£225
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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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[BRISTOL.]
The Bristol Contest, being a Collection of all the Papers published by both Parties, on the Election, 1754.
Bristol, ‘sold by the Printing-Office … and by J. Palmer’, [1754].
Extremely rare first edition of this Bristol-printed political pamphlet, bound with the first edition of a French work on pyrotechnics used both for spectacle and for war.
£650
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BRITISH MUSEUM.
List of Missing English Theological and Devotional Books.
[London, 1940s.]
Mimeographed typescript of books missing after the losses suffered by the British Museum Library during the Second World War. This is one of several lists of books destroyed, produced both as a record and as a tool for acquiring replacement copies – this copy appears to have been used for that...
£275
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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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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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BUCKNILL, Charles.
Notes from medical lectures.
London, February – April 1798.
A most interesting medical manuscript by one Charles Bucknill recording lectures given in 1798 by the Scottish anatomist Matthew Baillie (1761–1823) and the English obstetrician John Clarke (1758–1815). Bucknill – likely a forebear of the psychiatrist and mental health reformer Sir John...
£4500
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[BUNBURY, Henry William.] ‘GAMBADO, Geoffrey’.
Annals of Horsemanship, containing Accounts of accidental Experiments and experimental...
London, W. Nicholson for W. Baynes, 1808.
Third edition of Bunbury’s satirical work with humorous etchings. First published in 1791 and often presented as a continuation of Bunbury’s Academy for grown Horsemen (published in 1784 also under the name Gambado), the Annals of Horsemanship is a parody of Arthur Young’s...
£475
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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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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