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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. [PORTUGAL.]

    Memorias economicas da Academia Real das Sciencias de Lisboa, para o adiantamento da Agricultura, das Artes, e da Industria...

    Lisbon, Officina da Academia Real das Sciencias, 1789 1815.

    First edition. The long period of publication accounts for the rarity of complete sets of this important periodical, containing articles on industry, agriculture, political economy, statistics and general social and geographical matters. They exhibit the continued influence of Physiocratic ideas after...

    £750

  2. [PORTUGAL.]

    Centro dei Comunisti. Lotta di classe e potere politico in Portogallo (Quaderni Comunisti).

    Rome, 26 September 1975.


    An historical overview of the Portuguese ‘Carnation Revolution’ of 25 April 1974 and its aftermath, including a reproduction of João Abel Manta’s famous poster showing Vasco Gonçalves, Portugal’s prime minister, with his arms around a member of the MFA (Movimento das Forças Armadas)...

    £100

  3. POSTEL, Guillaume, and Anthonius THYSIUS.

    De Republica, seu magistratibus Atheniensium liber … Accessit Antonii Thysii IC. Discursus...

    Leiden, Jean Maire, 1645.

    An uncommon Leiden edition of Postel’s study of the Athenian magistracy, first published 1541 and revised and enlarged in 1551. Jean Ballesdens edited an edition for Maire in 1635; this 1645 edition added an essay on the same topic by the librarian and historian Anthony Thysius the Younger (1603–1665),...

    £200

  4. [POWNALL, Thomas.] POWNALL, Charles A. W.

    Thomas Pownall M.P., F.R.S., Governor of Massachusetts Bay, Author of The Letters of...

    London, Henry Stevens, Son & Stiles, 1908.

    First edition. Thomas Pownall, English colonial administrator and Governor of Massachusetts, was one of the earliest critics of Adam Smith, publishing a critical Letter (1776) discussing the Wealth of Nations. Although he expressed admiration for Smith’s work in the Letter, he opposed his view of the...

    £100

  5. [PRADT, Dominique Georges Frédéric de Riom de Prolhiac du Four de].

    Antidote au Congrès de Rastadt, ou Plan d’un nouvel équilibre...

    London [i.e. Hamburg], 1798.

    First edition of the Abbé de Pradt’s first and most famous work. The entries for the present work in Barbier, Quérard and NUC (which gives a different pagination) all include ‘par l’auteur des “Considérations sur la France”’ in their transcription of the title-page. Our copy is completely...

    £250

  6. [PRELLEUR, Peter.]

    The Compleat Tutor for the Harpsichord or Spinnet wherein is shewn the Italian Manner of Fingering with suits...

    London, Peter Thompson, musical instrument maker [1755?]

    First edition thus?, an abridgment of part 6 of Prelleur’s Modern Musick-Master (1731) but with different musical examples. The examples, printed on pp. 5–32, include popular tunes and dances alongside pieces adapted from Handel and Corelli.

    £1250

  7. [PUBLICIUS, Jacobus.]

    Ars memorativa.

    [Cologne, Johann Guldenschaff, c. 1481.]

    First illustrated edition of this treatise on the art of memory, with moving parts; the first general treatise on memory to be printed.

    £18000

  8. PURSEY, Thomas.

    The last General Assembly of the Free Church of Scotland.

    [Edinburgh, T. Pursey, 1900.]

    A photographic tour-de-force, assembling many hundreds of individual photographic portraits neatly incorporated into a painted scenario, and then reproduced as a photogravure, depicting all the attendees of the last General Assembly of the Free Church of Scotland, held in May 1900. Evidently a...

    £2000

  9. [QUESNAY, François].

    DU PONT DE NEMOURS, Pierre Samuel, editor. Physiocratie, ou constitution naturelle du gouvernement le plus...

    First edition of the ‘Bible’ of the Physiocrats and one of the most important and original works on political economy to be published before the Wealth of Nations. The excessively rare ‘Pékin’ imprint was printed in very small numbers and swiftly withdrawn because of a statement on page 104...

    £37500

  10. RADLOVA, Anna Dmitrievna.

    Korabli. Vtoraia kniga stikhov [Ships. A Second Book of Poems].

    St Petersburg, “Alkonost”, 1920.

    First edition of the second collection of poems published by Anna Radlova (1891–1949), a poet well-known for her translations of Shakespeare.

    £150

  11. RADLOVA, Anna Dmitrievna.

    Krylatyi gost’. Tret’ia kniga stikhov [The Winged Guest. A Third Book of Poems].

    [St Petersburg,] “Petropolis”, 1922.

    First edition: Radlova’s third collection of poems, written in 1920–22.

    £120

  12. RAIMONDI, Eugenio.

    Delle caccie … libri Quattro, aggiuntovi’n questa nuova ’mpressione il quinto libro della villa.

    [Naples, Lazzaro Scoriggio, 1626.]

    Second edition, expanded and extended, with a new series of striking hunting plates. The series of plates (attributable to Nicolas Perrey, who signs the title), showing composite scenes of hunters pursuing animals from birds and fish to lions and elephants, is wholly new, replacing the woodcut...

    £2500

  13. [RALEIGH, Henry Patrick].

    Must children die and mothers plead in vain? Buy More Liberty Bonds.

    New York, Sakett & Wilhelms Corp., [1918].

    This poster was produced to for the sale of the third or fourth liberty loans in 1918, which saw the printing of 9 and 10 million promotional posters produced, respectively. The large-scale of the effort was seen to reflect a turning point in war advertising. As the US was an immigrant nation, the Federal...

    £400

  14. REEVE, Clara.

    The Memoirs of Sir Roger de Clarendon, the natural son of Edward Prince of Wales, commonly called the Black Prince;...

    London: Printed for Hookham and Carpenter … 1793.

    First edition. After several novels with contemporary settings, Reeve returned here to the past, though it is less gothic than her Old English Baron. The historical setting is a foil for a commentary on contemporary post-Revolutionary French politics. Reeve had been an initial support of...

    £2750

  15. REEVE, Clara.

    The Exiles; or Memoirs of the Count de Cronstadt …

    London: Printed for T. Hookham … 1788.

    First edition, a gothic romance by the author of The Old English Baron (1777).

    £2400

  16. REID, Thomas.

    The Works of Thomas Reid … with an Account of his Life and Writings, by Dugalds Stewart … with Notes, by the...

    Charlestown (MA), Samuel Etheridge junior, 1813.

    First American edition of the foundation of the Scottish Common Sense School, with a life of Reid by his disciple Dugald Stewart. The set includes his early treatises and analytics, his enquiry into the human mind and the senses, memory, intellectual and active powers, actions, and morals.

    £120

  17. [RENNEVILLE, Sophie de (?).]

    Contes a Aglaé, ou la jeune moraliste.

    Paris, Caillou, c.1820.

    Very uncommon edition, possibly the first, of this collection of educational contes moraux, sometimes attributed to the prolific children’s author and journalist Sophie de Renneville (1772–1822).

    £325

  18. RENNIE, Neil.

    Pocahontas, Little Wanton: myth, life and afterlife.

    [London], Quaritch, 2007.

    Pocahontas – meaning ‘Little Wanton’ or playful one – is famous for something she may or may not have done four hundred years ago: rescue the English colonist John Smith from execution by her father, Powhatan, the Indian paramount chief of the Virginia area. Pocahontas, Little Wanton investigates...

    £25

  19. RENTSCH, Carl, Edler von Ehrenthal.

    Die Staatswirtschaft nach Naturgesetzen.

    Leipzig, Brockhaus, 1819.

    First edition. Rentsch’s political economy offers an in-depth analysis of concepts such as income and expenditure, value and cost, market value, and competition; particular attention is paid to coin, notes, circulation, public and private credit, and exchange.

    £150

  20. RHOADS, James Evans.

    Autograph letter signed (‘James E. Rhoads’) to Henry Horniman.

    Philadelphia, 22 July 1869.

    A letter from the first president of Bryn Mawr College near Philadelphia. Rhoads (1828–1895) helped establish the college as a nondenominational, internationally respected school, and the first higher education institution to offer graduate degrees to women.

    £100