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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. MEAD, Richard.

    A Short Discourse concerning pestilential Contagion, and the Methods to be used to prevent it … The third Edition.

    London, printed [by William Bowyer] for Sam. Buckley … and Ralph Smith … 1720.

    ‘Third edition’ of the most famous medical tract on the plague scare of 1720–1, written at the request of James Craggs, the secretary of State, following the bubonic outbreak in Marseilles in late 1719.

    £375

  2. [MEDICAL DICTIONARY.]

    Dictionary of medical terms, Latin-English wordlist, and list of abbreviations and contractions.

    [S.l., early 1800s].

    An interesting manuscript compiled by an anonymous medical student, comprising a dictionary of medical terms, from ‘Abdomen’ to ‘Zoster’, followed by a glossary of Latin terms with their English equivalents (including ‘Machina electrica – the electric machine’), and ending with a...

    £450

  3. MEGUSCHER, Francesco.

    Memoria … in risposta al quesito additare la migliore e più facile maniera per rimittere i boschi nelle...

    Milan, presso l’I.R. Istituto, 1847.

    Uncommon first edition of this comprehensive report on the best means of reversing the deforestation of the mountains of Lombardy in a way that would be both environmentally sustainable and economically profitable.

    £950

  4. MELCHIOR, Christian. 

    ‘Synechia sive summa lectionum Plutarchicarum a domino conrectore huius scholae Salderianae praelectarum. ...

    [Brandenburg an der Havel, 1620.] 

    An unpublished early seventeenth-century manuscript recording lectures on Plutarch’s pedagogical work On the Education of Children, bound with a scarce printed edition of the same text, and a rare edition of the poems of Theognis and other Greek lyric poets, each with numerous marginal and...

    £6500

  5. MELECRINIS, Maria Teresa. 

    Le voci del cuore a Maria Teresa Melecrinis dei baroni di Ioppolo e Coccorino che a di 6 luglio 1846...

    Naples, stamperia dell' Iride, 1846. 

    Very rare collection of odes and sonnets composed to mark the entry of Maria Teresa Melecrinis into the Benedictine monastery of San Paolo at Sorrento. 

    £175

  6. MENDONÇA, Manoel Teixeira Cabral de.

    O Guarda-livros moderno ou curso completo de instrucções elementares sobre as operações...

    Lisbon, Impressão Regia, 1823.

    Second edition, corrected and expanded, of vol. I, first editions of vol. II and the Supplemento. The first volume provides a broad overview of the history of commercial exchange, including present practices. Mendonça states that his intention is to demonstrate the benefits of studying geography, insurance,...

    £300

  7. [METEOROLOGY.] ZHAO Jingdong 赵静东, illustrator.

    氣象知䛊掛图（供小型展览） [Qixiang zhishi guatu (gong xiaoxing...

    Tianjin, Tianjin Municipal Press for the Popularisation of Science via Visual Materials, [1965].

    An apparently unrecorded set of posters from mid-1960s China instructing peasants in basic meteorology.

    £2000

  8. [MILAN – DEATH DUTIES.]

    [Incipit:] Ad un reale dispaccio in data del 4. corrente ottobre ...

    Milan, Pirola brothers, [31 October 1787].

    Scarce edict issued by Ferdinand Karl, Archduke of Austria-Este and Governor of the Duchy of Milan, on behalf of his brother, Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II, describing amendments to Joseph II’s Enlightened religious reforms, including the transfer of funeral expenses to the Church and a table of...

    £500

  9. MILBANK, Augustus Sussex.

    A Treatise upon the political & social Condition of Europe, from the Fall of the Roman Empire, down to...

    [Richmond, M. Bell for] London, Messrs Hatchard & Son, and Richmond, M. Bell, 1847.

    First and only edition of a rare Yorkshire-printed treatise of social history by an amateur historian and educational enthusiast, inscribed by the author to the Countess of Sandwich.

    £125

  10. MILL, John Stuart.

    A szabadságról. Fordította és az előszót írta Kállay Béni.

    Béni. Pest, Ráth Mór, 1867.

    Extremely rare (1 copy worldwide) first Hungarian edition of John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty. This translation, published in Pest, came out as the Habsburg Emperor accepted the consequences of a twenty-years-long strife for autonomy and rights on the part of Hungarian subjects. Mill’s anti-paternalistic...

    £975

  11. MILL, John Stuart.

    A szabadságról ... Angolból forditotta és az elöszót irta Kállay Béni.

    Pest, Kiadja Ráth Mór, 1867.

    First Hungarian edition of John Stuart Mill’s great essay On Liberty, with a lengthy introduction by the Austro-Hungarian statesman Béni Kállay (1839–1903). First published in 1859, Mill’s vastly influential essay was dedicated to his wife Harriet who had provided the stimulus for...

    £450

  12. MILL, John Stuart, and Edward Livingston YOUMANS.

    Новѣйшее образованiе: его истинныя цѣли и требованiя....

    St Petersburg, Izdanie “Russkoi knizhnoi torgovli”, 1867.

    First edition in Russian of these two works, published in the original that same year.

    £100

  13. MILL, John Stuart, and Jánosi FERENCZ (translator).

    A képviseleti kormány.

    Pest, Emich Gusztáv Tulajdona, 1867.

    First Hungarian edition of Considerations on representative Government, Mill’s most important political work after On Liberty. In his major work on political institutions Mill ‘discusses to what extent forms of government are a matter of choice, the criterion of a “good form of government”, and...

    £875

  14. MILL, John Stuart; Hugo KOSTERKA and Václav PETRŽELKA, translators.

    O Svobodě. Přeložili H. Kosterka a V. Petrželka...

    Prague, Czech student magazine press, 1891.

    First edition in Czech of On Liberty (1859), very rare, translated by the prominent translator and publisher Hugo Kosterka (1867–1956), editor and co-founder of the Moderní revue, and Václav Petrželka (1869–1927).

    £650

  15. MILL, John Stuart; Jan VÁŇA, translator.

    O Individualitě. Z anglického jazyka přeložil J. Váňa …

    Váňa … Prague, Militký and Novák, 1880.

    First edition in Czech, very rare, of Mill’s ‘On Individuality’, being chapter three of On Liberty (1859) – the first portion of that text to appear in Czech, and perhaps the earliest appearance of anything by Mill in that language. The translator was Jan Váňa (1847–1915),...

    £350

  16. MILL, John Stuart; 中村 敬太郎 NAKAMURA Keitarō [i.e. 中村 正直 NAKAMURA Masanao], translator.

    On Liberty. 自由之理...

    Shizuoka, Ken’ichiro Kihira, Meiji Mizunoesaru/Jinshin [i.e. 1872].

    First edition, rare, of the first Japanese translation of Mill’s On Liberty, published twelve years after the English original, and very popular in Japan as a result of this translation by the philosopher and educator Masanao Nakamura (1832–1891).

    £2500

  17. [MILL, John Stuart, witness].

    Report from the Select Committee on the Income and Property Tax; together with the Proceedings of...

    [London], Ordered by the House of Commons, to be Printed, 1 August 1861.

    First edition. This is the concluding report of the Commons Select Committee that had been responsible for investigating possible modifications to income tax policy. John Stuart Mill appeared before the Committee on the 18 June 1861, where he reiterated his central belief that the current system of income...

    £175

  18. [MONASTICISM].

    Risposta ad alcuni aggravi fatti ai monaci nel libro, che ha il titolo di Politica, diritto, e religione.

    Milan, Francesco Agnelli, 1742.

    Only edition of this anonymous response to Giuseppe Gorini Corio’s controversial Politica, diritto, e religione, that had appeared in Milan at the start of the same year.

    £400

  19. MONIGLIA, Tommaso Vicenzo.

    Osservazioni critico-filosofiche contro i materialisti, divise in due trattati ...

    Lucca, Vincenzo Giuntini, 1760.

    Uncommon anti-materialist work by the Tuscan philosopher Tommaso Moniglia (1686-1767).

    £250

  20. [MONS.]

    ...

    Mons, J. B. Varret, 1748.

    First and only edition, very rare, of this history of the Sunday school in Mons, established for the Christian education of the boys and girls of the city and supported by the Canonesses of St Waltrude among other benefactors.

    £975