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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[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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BUONACCORSI, Biagio, and Niccolò VALORI.
Diario de’ successi piu importanti seguiti in Italia, & particolarmente in...
Florence, Filippo & Jacopo Giunta, 1568.
First edition of an insider account of Medici politics by Biagio Buonaccorsi (1472–1522), colleague and confidant of Machiavelli, bound with the first edition of Malespini’s history of Florence and owned by Claude-Enoch Virey, secretary to Henri II de Bourbon, Prince de Condé.
£1000
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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
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BUXTON, Thomas Fowell.
The African Slave Trade and its Remedy …
London, John Murray, 1840.
First complete edition of the principal anti-slavery work of the politician and abolitionist Thomas Fowell Buxton (1786–1845), a presentation copy to a fellow abolitionist, James Pearson, dated 5 November 1840.
£750
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CAGNAZZI, Luca de Samuele.
Analisi dell’ economia privata e pubblica degli antichi relativamente a quella de’ moderni …
Naples, Società filomatica, 1830.
First edition. Cagnazzi (1764–1852) was originally a teacher of mathematics by profession, receiving a professorship at Naples in 1806. ‘His life was full of trouble; having been concerned in political intrigues, he had to flee from Naples and, after wandering, nearly always on foot, through Italy...
£125
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CAIROL, M. de.
Réflexions historiques et politiques, sur les revolutions qu’a essuyé l’agriculture sous différens gouvernemens,...
Amsterdam and Toulouse, Joseph Robert, 1786.
Very rare essay on the state of agriculture in France, and in particular in the Languedoc, examining the ways in which the policies of various governments (from the Romans and Visigoths onwards) have affected agricultural production, the current situation, and the ways in which matters could be...
£450
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CALVERT, William John.
The demand for labour is wealth … Supplement to monopoly and taxation vindicated against the errors of...
Newark, M. Hage and London, Longman … 1822.
Very rare first edition of Calvert’s supplement to his own work, Monopoly and taxation vindicated etc., published in 1821. Calvert wrote anonymously in the name of ‘a Nottinghamshire farmer’, but here uses his name. The supplement argues that Britain’s wealth and military success against France...
£250
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[CAMPOMANES, Pedro Rodriguez, Conde de].
Discurso sobre el Fomento de la Industria popular. De orden de S. M. [Carlos III] y del...
Madrid, D. Antonio de Sancha, 1774.
First edition; preceding the complementary Discurso sobre la educación popular de los artesanos y su fomenta (1775); Dutch and Italian editions appeared in 1780 and 1787. Campomanes (1723–1802) was, according to McCulloch, ‘one of the most intelligent and distinguished Spanish statesmen of [the...
£400
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CAMPOMANES, Pedro Rodriguez (Antonio Conca y Alcaraz, translator).
Trattato della regalia d’ammortizzazione, nel quale si dimostra,...
Parma, Filippo Carmignani, 1767.
First Italian translation of this influential treatise on the property rights of the Church and the state in Spain by the Spanish philosopher, economist, and historian Pedro Rodríguez de Campomanes (1723-1803).
£350
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CARAVADOSSI, Enrico.
La moderna filosofia convinta d’inganno nelle sue promesse di felicità libertà ed uguaglianza ragionamenti...
Turin, Giammichele Brioio, 1793.
First and seemingly only edition of this attack on the false promises of the philosophes, by the Torinese Dominican friar Enrico Caravadossi.
£395
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CAREY, Henry Charles.
Principles of social science … In three volumes …
Philadelphia, J.B. Lippincott, 1858-1859.
First edition, a very attractive copy, of Carey’s principal work. ‘His treatment of social science was original, and led him to a series of supposed discoveries, the order of which he has stated in the introduction of his most important work The Principles of Social Science. His point of departure...
£500
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CARNAP, Rudolf.
1959 & 1962.
The first photograph shows Carnap and his wife outside their house and is signed and, in another hand, dated 1959 as having been taken in Santa Monica. The second photograph is of Carnap and is dated 1960, signed and inscribed “Der lieben Erna, in alter Freundschaft”. This refers to Erna Lowenberg...
£1500
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CARNAP, Rudolf.
Existe-t-il des premises de la science qui soient incontrôlables? [Abstract from ‘Scientia’].
[N.p., n.p.,] September 1936.
First edition. ‘All the premises on which science depends, when they are not of a purely conventional nature, rest on experience’: thus the exitus of this article, a decisive statement of the impossibility of a synthetic proposition being beyond empirical test. Carnap published it in response to...
£100
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CARON, Jean-Charles-Félix.
Compendium institutionum philosophiae, in quo de rhetorica et philosophia, tractatur. Ad usum candidatorum...
Paris, N. M. Tilliard, 1770.
Very uncommon guide, by the Parisian surgeon Jean-Charles-Félix Caron, to the philosophy student in the University of Paris needs to know in order to graduate first as bachelor and then as master of arts in the university. The work is essentially a kind of bluffer’s guide: “there are people who,...
£750
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[CATECHISM.]
A B C D … Orazione Dominicale … Salutazione Angelica …
Bologna, [Ferdinando Pisarri] ‘all’insegna di S. Antonio’, [early 1700s].
An apparently unrecorded ABC and catechism for children, illustrated with small woodcuts, printed at Bologna in the early eighteenth century, most likely by Ferdinando Pisarri (1659–1737).
£3500
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[CATHERINE II, Empress of Russia].
Le Czarewitz Chlore. Conte Moral. De main impériale & de maitresse.
Berlin, Fréderic Nicolaï, Lausanne, François Grasset, 1782.
First edition, very rare, of a speculum principis of the Enlightenment, by one of the time’s most enlightened monarchs. Le Czarewitz Chlore is a moral tale written by Catherine II of Russia for her two grandsons, the future Alexander I and his younger brother Constantine, while their father and mother,...
£3000
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[CAVALLERI, Paolo Agostino.]
Lettera dall’Adriatico del signor Antonio Bianchi sopra l’opera de’diritti dell’uomo del sig....
Rome, Giovanni Zempel, 1792 (colophon 1793).
First edition, uncommon, of this counter-revolutionary polemic written in response to Spedalieri’s I diritti dell’uomo of the previous year and attributed to the Barnabite Paolo Agostino Cavalleri (1742-1803). Spedalieri had attempted a Catholic response to the revolutionary ideas of the rights of...
£375
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[CERI, Giovacchino Domenico.]
Prodromo all’estirpazione del pirronismo dalla ragion civile d’Italia.
[Florence?] 1769.
Only edition, uncommon, of this analysis of the political and legal organisation of Italy, and proposals for its improvement, by the Prato lawyer and historian Giovacchino Domenico Ceri (1734–1798).
£375
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CHALMERS [CHAMBERS], David, Lord Ormond.
Histoire abbregée de toutes les Roys de France, Angletaire, et Escosse … [with:]...
Paris, Robert Coulombel ‘at the sign of Aldus’, 1579.
First edition of the three principal works of David Chalmers (c. 1530–1592), a faithful follower of Mary, Queen of Scots, who appointed him Lord of Session and Privy Counsellor.
£2500