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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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  1. [HOSPICE SAINT-NICOLAS, METZ.]

    Deed granting land to the hospice.

    Metz, 5 May 1464.

    A significant document recording the grant of agricultural land in 1464 to the Hospice of Saint-Nicolas, the oldest hospital in Metz, in northeast France, issued during the reign of Louis XI and in the final year of the papacy of Pius II.

    £450

  2. AUGUSTINUS TRIUMPHUS [i.e. AUGUSTINUS de Ancona].  

    Summa de potestate ecclesiastica.

    Augsburg, [Johann Schüssler,] 6 March 1473.

    First edition of this highly important and influential magnum opus of political theory, a defence of papal supremacy.

    £22500

  3. THOMAS AQUINAS; Antonius PIZAMANUS, editor.

    Opuscula [with a life of St Thomas].

    Venice, Hermannus Liechtenstein, 7 September 1490.

    First collected edition of seventy-one shorter works by Thomas Aquinas.

    £3750

  4. ANTONIUS de Vercellis. 

    Sermones quadragesimales de XII mirabilibus Christianae fidei excellentiis [with additions by Ludovicus...

    Venice, Johannes and Gregorius de Gregoriis, de Forlivio, [for Alexander Calcedonius], 16 February 1492/93. 

    A remarkable copy of the first edition of Antonius de Vercellis’ sermons, owned and annotated by three contemporary Franciscans, one of whom, Andrea Alamanni, may be the confessor who administered Machiavelli’s last rites. 

    £8500

  5. [JUSTICES OF THE PEACE.]

    The Boke of Justices of Peas the Charge with all the Processe of the Cessions, Warrantes Supercedias &...

    [Colophon: London, Richard Pynson], [1505–6?].

    First edition(?), very rare, of the first printed guide for Justices of the Peace, issued with a short guide to land law.

    £27500

  6. DOMINICUS DE FLANDRIA.

    Dominici de Flandria ordinis predicator[um] artium et theologie doctoris in divi Thome de Aq[ui]no co[m]mentaria...

    Venice, Giorgio Arrivabene for the heirs of Ottaviano Scoto, 25 January 1514.

    Scarce early editions of two Aristotelian commentaries. The first, by the Dominican philosopher Dominic of Flanders (c. 1425–1479), analyses two works by Thomas Aquinas: his commentary on Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics (on the nature of scientific axioms), and his De fallaciis...

    £3000

  7. PLATO; [Marsilio FICINO].

    Platonis opera.

    [(Colophon:) Venice, Filippo Pinzi, 22 April 1517.]

    Third edition of Marsilio Ficino’s important and influential Latin translations of and commentaries on Plato’s works, with numerous early annotations.

    £5000

  8. PLINY the Younger, Gaius SUETONIUS TRANQUILLUS, and Julius OBSEQUENS.

    C. Plinii Secundi Novocomensis Epistolarum...

    [(Colophon:) Venice, in the house of Aldus and Andrea Torresano, June 1518.]

    The second Aldine edition of the letters of Pliny the Younger, with marks of early German ownership and annotations.

    £975

  9. VELLEIUS PATERCULUS.

    Historiae Romanae duo volumina, ad M. Vinicium Cos. progenerum Tiberii Caesaris, per Beatum Rhenanum Selestadiensem...

    [(Colophon:) Basel, Johann Froben, November 1520.]

    Editio princeps of a summary history of Rome to AD 29 by the soldier-turned-historian Velleius Paterculus, edited from a now lost manuscript by the German humanist Beatus Rhenanus (1485–1547), with tipped-in notes by a contemporary student of Roman history displaying a remarkable concern...

    £2750

  10. MARSILIUS of Inghen, GILES of Rome, and ALBERT of Saxony.

    Marsilii de genera[tione et corruptione]. Commentaria fidelissimi...

    [(Colophon:) Venice, [Boneto Locatello for] the heirs and partners of Ottaviano Scoto, 19 June 1520.]

    A trio of late thirteenth- and fourteenth-century commentaries on Aristotle’s books on generation and corruption, composed at the University of Paris by Giles of Rome, Marsilius of Inghen, and Albert of Saxony, demonstrating the international nature of medieval scholarship.

    £1500

  11. FLORUS, Lucius. 

    Lucii Flori rerum ab urbe condita liber primus [– quartus]. 

    [Venice, in aedibus Aldi et Andreae Soceri, March 1521.] 

    Florus’s epitome of Roman history, extracted from the Aldine edition of March 1521 which comprised an epitome of Livy, Florus, and Niccolò Perotti’s translation of Polybius. 

    £750

  12. ALCIONIO, Pietro.

    Petri Alcyonii Medices legatus de exsilio.

    [Venice, in the house of Aldus Manutius and Andrea Torresano, November 1522.]

    First edition of Alcionio’s dialogue on exile, an intensely annotated copy from a family of French humanists and Reformers. Pietro Alcionio (or Petrus Alcyonius, fl. 1487–1527) was a Venetian humanist, scholar and Aristotelian translator who began his career as a proofreader for Aldus Manutius....

    £5750

  13. PLUTARCH.

    ...

    Venice, Nicolao di Aristotile detto Zoppino, March 1525.

    An attractive illustrated edition of twenty-seven of Plutarch’s lives, extensively annotated by a Papal tax-collector, in a striking contemporary binding.

    £2750

  14. DIOMEDES; Aelius DONATUS; Johann CAESARIUS, editor.

    Grammatici opus, ab Iohanne Caesario, ita emendatum, Scholiisque illustratum,...

    Hagenau, Johann Setzer, 1526.

    A sammelband of four early sixteenth-century Latin grammars, from the Macclesfield Library at Shirburn Castle. The first work comprises two fourth-century Latin grammars, of which one is a rare complete survival from antiquity; this is bound with three early sixteenth-century schoolbooks on grammar...

    £1250

  15. [PADUA.] 

    Statuta Patavina noviter impressa cum diligenti cura et castigatione et cum additionibus necessariis tam provisionum...

    Venice, Girolamo Giberti, 25 January 1528. 

    An attractive volume of statutes relating to the city of Padua in northern Italy, edited by the legal scholar Bartolomeo Abborario, with detailed annotations by a practicing local lawyer. 

    £2500

  16. ITALY – PIEVE DI SAN MINIATO DI RUBBIANA.

    Petition to Pope Clement VII, in Latin, on paper, 30 lines in a small Italian notarial...

    The petition explains that the parish of San Miniato in the Valle Rubbiana, in the diocese of Fiesole and in the lay patronage of the Buondelmonti family of Florence, is vacant following the death of the organist Mariotto di Michele Giovanni. The patrons, or the majority of them, or their duly appointed...

    £250

  17. DIO CASSIUS.

    Dione historico delle guerre et fatti de Romani. Tradotto di Greco in lingua vulgare per M. Nicolo Leoniceno. Con...

    Venice, Niccolò Zoppino, March 1533.

    First edition of Dio Cassius’s Roman History in any language, translated into Italian from the original Greek by Niccolò Leoniceno and preceding the Greek editio princeps, printed by Robert Estienne in 1548, by some fifteen years.

    £2500

  18. EUSTRATIUS of Nicaea, et al.

    Ευστρατιου και αλλων τινων επισημων υπομνηματα εις...

    [(Colophon:) Venice, heirs of Aldus Manutius and Andrea Torresano, July 1536.]

    Editio princeps of the Greek commentaries on Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics by Eustratius of Nicaea, Michael of Ephesus, the Peripatetic philosopher Aspasius, and other anonymous scholiasts, published by the Aldine press, annotated by a contemporary scholar.

    £5500

  19. SUETONIUS Tranquillus, Gaius, and HERODIAN OF ANTIOCH.

    Vita di duodeci imperatori… nuovamente tradotta in volgare. Historia...

    Venice, Venturino di Rossinelli [for Curzio Navò], 1539.

    Annotated copy of a scarce edition of this early Italian translation of Suetonius and Herodianus, two works of ancient history which explore the lives and deeds of Roman emperors from Julius Caesar to Domitian, and from Commodus to the Year of the Six Emperors in 238. The translator of this vernacular...

    £1250

  20. [BOUCHET, Jean.]

    Les triu[m]phes de la noble et amoureuse dame, et l’art de honnestement aymer, compose par le Traverseur des...

    Paris, Estienne Caveiller for Pierre Sergent, 6 June 1539.

    Unrecorded issue of Jean Bouchet’s contemplative vernacular work of moral theology in prose and verse explicitly intended for a female readership, following the personified Soul in dialogue with several virtues as she attempts to combat the forces of earthly temptation with the power of divine grace,...

    £4500