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.

  1. HARRIS, James, later first Earl of Malmesbury.

    A small group of documents.

    [1779–1785].

    Harris (1746–1820) was ‘the leading British diplomatist of the final quarter of the eighteenth century’, noted for his skills as a linguist, and his popularity and easy social skills.

    £325

  2. HEBER, Reginald, and Nicolas BARKER (editor).

    A Letter from India.

    The Roxburghe Club, 2020.

    'I do not expect that with fair prospects of eminence at home, you should go to the Ganges for a mitre,’ wrote Sir Charles Watkin Williams Wynn, President of the Board of Commissioners for Indian Affairs, in 1819 to Reginald Heber at Hodnet in Shropshire, but in vain. Despite a growing reputation...

    £100

  3. [HEMSTERHUIS, François.] 

    Alexis ou de l’age d’or. 

    Riga, Johann Friedrich Hartknoch, 1787. 

    First edition of Hemsterhuis’s philosophical dialogue on a ‘golden age’, an influential work of pre-Romantic aesthetics. 

    £375

  4. HENNEQUIN, Pierre.

    Nouveau cours de rhétorique, à l’usage de la jeunesse des deux sexes; dédié à sa Majesté l’Impératrice...

    Moscow, Auguste Semen, 1818.

    Only edition, very uncommon, of this guide to rhetoric by the Moscow-based French grammarian Pierre Hennequin (1772–1849), explicitly designed for both sexes and dedicated to the Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna (1759–1828).

    £950

  5. HERODOTUS.

    Historiae Libri IX: et de vita Homeri libellus. Illi, ex interpretatione Laurentio Vallae adscripta; hic ex interpretatione...

    Frankfurt, Heirs of Andreas Wechel (Claude de Marne and Johann Aubry), 1594.

    Freidrich Sylberg’s edition of Herodotus in the Latin translation by Lorenzo Valla, based on the text published by Estienne in 1566, along with extracts from the Greek physician Ctesias’s Persika, a history of Persia, and Indika, the first book to be devoted entirely to India, Estienne’s...

    £1500

  6. [HERVEY, Elizabeth.]

    The Mourtray Family. A Novel …

    London: Printed by Millar Ritchie … for R. Faulder … 1800.

    First edition of the penultimate novel by Elizabeth Hervey (c. 1748–1820), elder half-sister of the writer William Beckford – her father, Francis Marsh, had died and her mother Maria (née Hamilton) remarried another Jamaica plantation owner, William Beckford senior, who also died...

    £2500

  7. HERYNG, Zygmunt.

    Teorja i praktyka ekonomji.

    [Warsaw, G. Centnerszwer], 1897.

    First edition, very rare, of Heryng’s Theory and practice of economics. Zygmunt Heryng, Polish economist and political activist, was deeply concerned with economics as a science. He saw it as a systematic and conscious pursuit of efficiency in resource allocation in relation to targets. One of the...

    £150

  8. HOLLANDER, Jacob Harry.

    Economic Liberalism.

    New York and Cincinnati, The Abingdon Press, [1925].

    First edition, dedicated ‘to the memory of Herbert B. Adams, who first taught me the meaning of liberalism’.

    £50

  9. HOLLAR, Wenceslaus, attributed.

    [Portraits of celebrated Courtezans.]

    Nineteenth century?

    A famous series of portraits depicting Restoration-era London courtesans, long attributed to Hollar, but that attribution rejected by Pennington and New Hollstein.

    £1200

  10. [HONE, William, et al.]

    Sammelband of satirical pamphlets.

    London, mostly William Hone, 1818-1821, 1824, 1830.

    A sammelband of political satire from the early ninteenth century, predominantly relating to the radical writer and bookseller William Hone, including his three trials for blasphemy.

    £1250

  11. HOPKINS, William. 

    Address delivered at the Hull Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, September...

    London, Taylor & Francis, 1853. 

    First edition, an 1853 Address to the British Association for the Advancement of Science by its President William Hopkins (1793–1866), inscribed by the author and given to his erstwhile student Francis Galton (1822–1911).  A mathematician and geologist, Hopkins became President of the British...

    £350

  12. [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

  13. HUISH, Robert.

    Fatherless Rosa; or, the Dangers of the Female Life. Expressly written as a Companion to Fatherless Fanny …

    London, Published by T. Kaygill … for William Emans …, 1820.

    First edition. Like the best-selling Fatherless Fanny (1811, possibly by Clara Reeve), Fatherless Rosa, set in the middle of the eighteenth century, pleads ‘the cause of virtue and morality’, but with characters exhibiting ‘a greater degree of vice’ than Fanny, the little...

    £750

  14. HUME, David, [and Octavie BELOT, translator].

    Histoire de la maison de Tudor sur le trône d’Angleterre … traduit...

    Amsterdam [i.e. Paris], 1763.

    A very fine set of the first French edition of Hume’s history of Tudor England, translated by the Parisian widow Octavie Belot (1719–1805, née Guichard), who supported herself with income from her translations, and through her work developed a friendship with Hume.

    £600

  15. ‘HURLBUT’ [i.e. HURLBERT], William Henry.

    Pictures of Cuba.

    London: M’Corquodale and Co. for Longman, Brown, Green, & Longmans, 1855.

    First British edition, revised and retitled, issued in the ‘Traveller’s Library’ series. Pictures of Cuba was first published under the title Gan-Eden: or, Pictures of Cuba (Boston: 1854), and Hurlbert (1827-1895) states in his preface that, ‘In the short time that has elapsed...

    £150

  16. HURRY, Thomas.

    Tables of interest, from one pound to five hundred millions, for one day; by which the interest for any sum of money...

    [Yarmouth], Printed for the author, and sold by Messrs. Robinson, London; and Downes and March, Yarmouth, 1786.

    One of two editions published in 1786, the other one undated, ESTC does not give any precedence. Tables for calculating interest at a quarter, half, three-quarters, three, four, and five percent; intended as a quick reference for bankers and merchants. Hurry precedes his tables with four pages of example...

    £150

  17. HUSKISSON, William (1770-1830), politician.

    Autograph letter signed (‘W Huskisson’) to an unnamed ‘Dear Sir’.

    18 Hertford Street [London], 21 December, 1810.

    Huskisson was a leading exponent of strict adherence to the Gold standard and an opponent of the perceived over-issue of bank notes in the early nineteenth century. This letter was written only a few months after Huskisson had published his important pamphlet, The question concerning the depreciation...

    £150

  18. HYGINUS Gromaticus, attributed, and POLYBIUS.

    De Castris Romanis, quae extant. Cum notis & animadversionibus …

    Amsterdam, Jodocus Pluymer, 1660.

    First edition thus, with annotations by the politician Radboud Herman Scheele (1622–1662).

    £1000

  19. [INDUSTRIOUS POOR, Charitable Corporation for the Relief of.]

    The present state of the unhappy sufferers of the Charitable Corporation...

    London, [n.p.], 1733.

    First and only edition of an anonymous plea to Parliament for the rescue of the Charitable Corporation for the Relief of the Industrious Poor, a pawnbroker which granted credit at low interest to the ‘deserving poor’ who left a pledge. Founded in 1707, in the 1720s the Corporation came under scrutiny...

    £250

  20. [INTERSEX.]

    Three pamphlets.

    Paris, 1892–1920.

    A collection of rare French pamphlets on the subject of differences in sex development from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Two of the three pamphlets are doctoral theses, covering the social impact of differences in sex development, and persistent müllerian duct syndrome (‘tubular...

    £450