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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[WINCHESTER COLLEGE.]
Printed and manuscript election roll.
[Winchester,] ‘1 November 1782’.
A remarkable eighteenth-century part-printed election roll from Winchester College, with admissions, the names of scholars, prize-winners, and pupils elected to New College Oxford.
£1250
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WOLLSTONECRAFT, Mary.
An Historical and moral View of the Origin and Progress of the French Revolution; and the Effect it has produced...
London, J. Johnson, 1794.
First edition of Wollstonecraft’s eloquent analysis of the causes of the French revolution, written as an antidote to Burke’s Reflections, our copy with manuscript notes by William Michael Rossetti. The work was never completed before Wollstonecraft’s death in 1797, though the first volume...
£7250
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[WOMEN-PEARLS.]
De Vrouwen-Peirle, ofte dryvoudige historie van Helena de Verduldige, Griseldis de Zagtmoedige, en Florentina de...
Ghent, J. Begyn, [1780–1810].
An attractive copy of the ‘Women-pearls’, a Flemish chapbook portraying three remarkable women – Helena the Patient, Griselda the Meek, and Florentina the Faithful – and their marvellous stories derived from medieval romances, featuring seduction, amputation, and narrowly-avoided incest.
£550
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XENOPHON.
De Cyri regis Persarum vita atque disciplina, libri VIII.
Paris, Andreas Wechel, 1572.
First edition of Joachim Camerarius’ Latin translation of Xenophon’s Cyropaedia, a partly fictional work on the life and education of Cyrus the Great which served as a model for medieval and renaissance mirrors of princes, including Machiavelli’s Il Principe. A beautiful...
£875
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YRVEN, Marcelle.
La comédienne et le féminisme.
Paris, L. Pichon, 1914.
First edition of this feminist work on the necessity of a thorough literary and cultural education for women in theatre, by the celebrated actress Marcelle Yrven, presented to the editor-in-chief of Le Figaro’s literary supplement.
£250
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ZAPPI, Giambattista and Faustina.
Rime di Giambattista Felice Zappi e di Faustina Maratti sua consorte.
Nice, Société typographique, 1781.
Uncommon Nice printing of the collected poetry of one of the most prominent literary couples of early eighteenth-century Rome, Faustina Maratti (1679–1745) and her husband Giambattista Zappi (1667–1719). First published after Zappi’s death in 1723, the collection consists of seventy-three...
£200
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[ZATTA, Antonio.]
Il filosofo del nord, ovvero Corso di morale filosofia.
‘Londra’ [i.e. Venice], [Zatta], 1788.
First edition under this title of this course of moral philosophy, broadly construed, in which the author attempts to invoke the authority of the ‘philosophers of the North’ (inter alia Hobbes, Bacon, Clark, and Addison on one side of the English Channel, Bayle, Pascal, La Mettrie, Grotius,...
£950
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ZECH, Franz Xaver.
Hierarchia ecclesiastica, ad Germaniae Catholicae principia et usum delineata.
Ingolstadt, Schleig, 1750.
First edition of a comprehensive exposition of the prerogatives, duties, jurisdiction, authority and responsibilities of the secular and regular German Catholic clergy. Forty tituli set out the legal profiles and relative hierarchy of pope, patriarchs, cardinals, envoys, bishops, canons, members of religious...
£175
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[ZEPHYRUS IMAGE, Edward DORN].
Three anti-President Nixon items, two calling for impeachment.
[San Francisco, c. 1972–1973].
A striking set of handbills urging the impeachment of President Nixon by the Zephyrus Image press.
£200
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ZUCKERKANDL, Robert.
Die Währungsänderung in Britisch-Indien.
[Vienna and Prague, F. Tempski, and Leipzig, G, Freytag, c. 1894]
First edition of this rare paper, offprinted from Zeitschrift für Volkswirtschaft, Socialpolitik und Verwaltung, volume III, issue I, on the changes of the Indian currency against the silver and gold prices. From 1873 the value of the Rupee sank considerably, leading to the British government of India’s...
£120