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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. PUBLICOLA.

    An answer to an audacious letter from John Angelo Belloni, dated Rome the 4th of May, 1732. N.S. Being an antidote to...

    London, [n. p.], 1732.

    An extremely rare pamphlet of economic and political interest, relating to fraudulent activity in the Charitable Corporation and to one of the chief culprit’s rumoured links to the Old Pretender.

    £450

  2. 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

  3. [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

  4. 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

  5. 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

  6. [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

  7. 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

  8. 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

  9. 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

  10. [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

  11. 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

  12. 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

  13. 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

  14. RICARDO, David.

    Zasady ekonomji politycznej i podatkowania.

    Warsaw, Jan Cotty, 1919.

    Second and most complete Polish edition of On the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation (first published in 1817), in a new translation by Dr. M. Bronstein. The 1826 first Polish translation by Stanislaw Kunatt was based on the translation into French by the Portuguese journalist Francisco Solano...

    £150

  15. [RICARDO, David.]

    Report from the select committee on the usury laws.

    London, ordered by the House of Commons to be printed, 28 May 1818.

    First edition of the report from the select committee ‘appointed to consider the effects of the laws which regulate or restrain the interest of money, and to report their opinion thereupon to the House’ (p. 3). The question of the Usury Laws had first been raised in the House of Commons by Brougham...

    £200

  16. RICCI, Giovanni and PORTA, Ercolano.

    Storia della missione francescana e del Vicariato Apostolico del Hunan meridionale dalle sue...

    Bologna, Stabilimenti tipografici riuniti, 1925.

    First and only edition of this history of the Franciscan Mission in South Hunan from its establishment to 1924, with particular attention to the persecution of the Christians during the Boxer Rebellion and the following years of restoration and progress of the mission. The appendix comprises letters,...

    £450

  17. [RICHARD, Charles-Louis.]

    Lettres d’un archevêque, à l’auteur de la brochure intitulée: Du droit du souverain sur les biens-fonds...

    A Cologne, 1770.

    First edition, uncommon, of this response to an anticlerical essay by the Chevalier de Cerfvol by the Dominican theologian and anti-philosophe Charles-Louis Richard (1711–1794). De Cherfvol had argued against the wealth of the clergy, and in particular of the religious orders, and proposed a means...

    £200

  18. RICHARDSON, Ralph.

    Coutts & Co. Bankers Edinburgh and London, being the memoirs of a family distinguished for its public services...

    London, Elliott Stock, 1901

    Second edition, revised and enlarged, narrating the instrumental role of the Coutts family in establishing a magnificent system of banking in Scotland.

    £40

  19. RIPLEY, Percy.

    A short history of investment.

    London, Sir Isaac Pitman & Sons, Ltd., 1934.

    First edition of this work aimed at a British audience of bankers, members of the Stock Exchange and City workers, charting the history of investment from early times and the Elizabethans through to 1933, passing both prosperity, and tragedy and national debt. The work is dedicated to the financial journalist...

    £50

  20. ROBERTS, Henry.

    The dwellings of the labouring classes, their arrangement and construction, illustrated by a reference to the model...

    London, Society for Improving the Condition of the Labouring Classes, 1850.

    First edition of one of the most important publications on philanthropic housing by the architect and housing reformer Henry Roberts (1803-1876).

    £250