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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[DRYDEN, John.]
The Medall. A Satyre against Sedition. By the Authour of Absalom and Achitophel …
London, Printed for Jacob Tonson … 1682.
First edition, second issue, adding two Latin lines at the end. The subject of Dryden’s satire was the medal struck to celebrate Shaftesbury’s acquittal from charges of high treason. According to Spence, Charles II gave Dryden ‘the hint for writing his poem’, and rewarded him for it. In...
£750
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DUBOIS-AYMÉ [Jean Marie Joseph Aimé DUBOIS, known as].
Examen de quelques questions d’économie politique, et notamment de...
Paris, Pelicier, 1823.
First edition. Dubois-Aymé uses mathematical methodology to examine two of the cases he considers. In the first instance he ‘compares the power due to the riches of two countries. This power he maintains is in proportion to the goods available to each country over and above its indispensable requirements...
£250
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DUHAMEL du Monceau, Henri-Louis, [and John MILLS (translator)].
A practical Treatise of Husbandry, wherein are contained,...
London, J. Whiston & B. White, R. Baldwin, W. Johnston, and P. Davey & B. Law, 1759.
First English edition, edited and expanded by John Mills – his first agricultural publication. Among the most prolific and respected agricultural authors of the second half of the eighteenth century, John Mills (c. 1717–1786) is first recorded in 1743 in Paris, working on a French edition...
£650
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DUNOYER, Charles-Bathélemy.
L’industrie et la morale considérées dans leurs rapports avec la liberté.
Paris, A. Sautelet, 1825.
First edition of this defence of the old economic liberalism against the new democracy by the French economist and politician Dunoyer (1786-1863). ‘In anticipation of Spencer, Dunoyer here developed the idea that society was an organism, in which it fell to the lot of a congeries of institutions and...
£150
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ÉCOLE DE MEDECINE DE MONTPELLIER.
A collection of eighty-seven doctoral dissertations presented to and defended at the Medical...
Montpellier, various publishers, 1800–1810.
An extraordinary collection, bound up very soon after the last was published, of eighty-seven doctoral dissertations presented to the ancient medical school at Montpellier in the first decade of the nineteenth century.
£1750
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[ELIZABETH II.] KEYSTONE (PARIS).
La Princesse Elisabeth fille du Duc d’York, et héritier, du trône d’Angleterre …
1936.
Princess Elizabeth on the day of the announcement of the abdication of Edward VII.
£1200
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ELLIS, Charles Thomas.
Practical Remarks and Precedents of Proceedings in Parliament; comprising the Standing Orders of both Houses,...
London, Brooke and Rider et al., 1802.
First edition of the earliest comprehensive treatment of the important subject of private bill legislation, being a greatly revised and enlarged version of the author’s Solicitor’s Instructor in Parliament concerning Estate and Inclosure Bills (1799). Further, updated editions and supplements were...
£550
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[EMBOSSED BINDING.] DE LA RUE, Thomas (binder). SHERIDAN, Louisa Henrietta.
The Comic Offering; or Ladies’ Melange of...
London, Smith, Elder, and Co., 1832.
An appropriately light-hearted embossed binding, on the second outing of this compendium of humorous stories, verses and vignettes to amuse the highly refined young ladies of the early nineteenth century. The publisher’s advertisements mention other works that are in ‘elegantly embossed’...
£300
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ENDERS, Elizabeth Crump.
Swinging Lanterns.
New York and London, D. Appleton and Co., 1923.
First edition of this celebrated Chinese travel memoir by Elizabeth Crump Enders, a vivid depiction of China in the 1920s formerly in the possession of Josephine del Drago, American heiress and Chinese art collector.
£100
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[ENGLAND, PARLIAMENT.]
An ordinance of the Lords and Commons assembled in Parliament. For the speedy raising and levying of moneyes,...
London, for John Wright, 27 July 1643.
The ordinance which introduced Excise into England. ‘Excise’ is defined in the OED as follows: ‘A duty charged on home goods, either in the process of their manufacture or before their sale to the home consumers … In England this kind of taxation was first adopted in 1643, in acknowledged...
£275
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EPICTETUS.
Το του Επικτητου εγχειριδιον. Ex editione Joannis Upton accurate expressum.
Glasgow, Robert and Andrew Foulis, 1751.
The first miniature Foulis edition of Epictetus in Greek, and the first Foulis Epictetus in Greek only. A 1765 reissue was, according to ESTC, reset.
£650
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ERASMUS, Desiderius.
Paraclesis, id est adhortio ad sanctissimum ac saluberrimum Cristianae philosophiae studium …
Basel, Johann Froben, February 1520.
Attractive contemporary Erasmus sammelband, superbly eloquent in its physical union of three treatises without which the humanist’s Praise of Folly would risk gross misinterpretation.
£5500
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ESTIENNE, Charles.
De re vestiaria libellus, ex Bayfio excerptus: addita vulgaris linguae interpretatione, in adulesce[n]tuloru[m]...
Paris, Robert Estienne, 1536.
A wonderful sammelband of four children’s books compiled and published by the Estiennes, covering Roman dress and vases as well as plants and trees, bound with Antonio Telesio’s celebrated treatise on colours.
£2250
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EUNAPIUS.
Ευναπιου του Σαρδιανου βιοι φιλοσοφων και σοφιστων … De vitis philosophorum...
‘Cologne’ [but Geneva?], Samuel Crispin, 1616.
Very uncommon edition of the twenty-four biographies of Eunapius of Sardis (b. 347?), valuable as a source for the neo-Platonic, and anti-Christian, philosophy of the fourth century; among his subjects were Plotinus, Porphyry, Iamblichus, and Epiphanius. The Latin translation is by Hadrianus Junius.
£450
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EUSTRATIUS of Nicaea, et al.
Ευστρατιου και αλλων τινων επισημων υπομνηματα εις...
[(Colophon:) Venice, heirs of Aldus Manutius and Andrea Torresano, July 1536.]
Editio princeps of the Greek commentaries on Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics by Eustratius of Nicaea, Michael of Ephesus, the Peripatetic philosopher Aspasius, and other anonymous scholiasts, published by the Aldine press, annotated by a contemporary scholar.
£5500
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[FACCHINEI, Ferdinando.]
Note ed osservazioni sul libro intitolato Dei delitti e delle pene.
[Venice, Zatta,] 1765.
First edition of this influential Enlightenment work with profound philosophical, political, and economic implications, containing in a single page both one of the earliest instances of the term ‘socialist’ in print and an early reference to the concept of the ‘invisible hand’, pitched one...
£5500
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FALCONER, William.
Remarks on the Influence of Climate, Situation, Nature of Country, Population, Nature of Food, and Way of Life,...
London, C. Dilly, 1781.
First edition of Falconer’s pioneering contribution to the late Enlightenment’s study of environmental forces on society.
£1750
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FARIS, Ahmad.
Abdaʻ ma-kan fi suwar Salitan Al ʻUthman … Album des souverains Ottomans édité par Selim Faris Effendy directeur...
Leipzig, Carl Garte, [c. 1885].
A handsome set of portraits of thirty-four Ottoman Sultans from Osman I, founder of the Ottoman Empire, to Abdul Hamid II, who reigned from 1876 to 1909, this copy annotated with notes in Arabic.
£3500
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[FASCISM.]
Ordinamento Corporativo dello Stato Fascista.
Padua, Edizione di propaganda corporative, 1935.
Italian Fascism primarily followed the economic model of corporatism to organise capital and labour interest groups into trade unions and employer associations such as agriculture, industry, commercial trade, professionals and artists, as well as banks and credit associations. These trade associations...
£2500
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FAY, Charles Ryle.
Copartnership in Industry.
Cambridge, at the University Press, 1913.
First edition. Charles Ryle Fay (1884–1961) was a favourite pupil of Alfred Marshall, and in 1908 was elected to a fellowship at Christ’s College where he later became a reader in Economic History.
£50