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.
-
[TRADE AND EXCISE].
An Additional Act for the better improvement and advancing the receipts of the Excise and New-Impost. At the...
London, Henry Hills and Iohn Field, Printers to His Highness, 1657.
First edition. The most substantial part of the Act, entitled ‘A Book of Values of Merchandize imported, according to which, excize is to be paid by the first buyer’, includes a 40-page alphabetical list of imported commodities, each recorded with the respective payable duty. A lively and detailed...
£250
-
TUCKER, Josiah.
Betydande frågor om handelen, wid tilfålle af de motsäjelser, som skedde emot den sista billen, om utlänningars...
[v. Oelreich], 1763.
First Swedish edition, scarce, of this history on the treatment of foreign residents in Britain, Reflections on the Expediency of a Law for the Naturalization of Foreign Protestants (1751–1752). This book comprises only the main body of Part II (1752), ‘Important Queries occasioned by The Rejection...
£200
-
TUGAN-BARANOSKIĬ, M. I.
Sovremennyĭ sotsializm v svoem istoricheskom razvitii.
St. Petersburg, Buduschnost’, 1906.
First edition of Tugan-Baranoskiĭ’s work on socialism; it was translated into English as Modern Socialism in its Historical Development by M. I. Redmount and published in 1910. After dismissal from his position at the University of St. Petersburg in 1899 for ‘political unreliability’, Tugan-Baranoskiĭ...
£350
-
TUGAN-BARANOVSKII, Mikhail Ivanovich.
Teoreticheskiia osnovyi Marksizma.
St Petersburg, I. N. Skorokhodov, 1905.
First Russian edition of Theoretical Foundations of Marxism; a German edition, Theoretische Grundlagen der Marxismus, was published in the same year. In the present work Tugan-Baranovsky shows the influence of the revisionism present throughout the socialist movement at the turn of the century. He approaches...
£750
-
TUGAN-BARANOVSKI, Mikhail Ivanovich.
Obshchestvennoe ekonomicheskie idealyi nashego vremeni
Saint Petersburg, Izdatelstvo ‘Vestniks Znaniya’ V.V. Bitner, 1913 .
First and only edition of Socio-Economic Ideals in Our Time, seemingly never translated into English. The work contains chapters on the exploitation of the working classes, centralised, federalised and anarchised socialism, communism, and collectivism, and the transition from capitalism to socialism.
£850
-
VALERIANI MOLINARI, Luigi.
Discorsi concernenti la pubblica economia il gius pubblico e l’antico gius romano.
Bologna, Masi, 1809.
First edition of Valeriani’s (1758–1828) rare work of political economy presented as a science which stands as an organic complement to a nation’s set of legislation.
£750
-
[VALLI, Francesco di Andrea.]
Manuscript receipt book.
Villa di Vaglie, Cortona, 1735-1767.
An interesting manuscript receipt book recording the affairs and transactions of Francesco di Andrea Valli (or Vagli) and his sons Pietro and Egidio, landowners and farmers from Villa di Vaglie near Cortona, over the course of four decades.
£375
-
VANSITTART, Nicholas.
Substance of two speeches [on the bullion question], made by the Right Hon. N. Vansittart, on the 7th and...
London, J. Hatchard, 1811.
First edition of this important contribution by Vansittart (1766-1851) to the so-called Bullionist Controversy, ‘the series of debates about monetary theory and policy which took place in Britain over the years 1797-1821, when the specie convertibility of Bank of England notes was suspended’, the...
£500
-
WALKER, Francis Amasa.
Discussions in Economics and Statistics.
New York, Henry Holt and Company, 1899.
First edition of this collection edited by Professor Dewey of more than fifty articles by Francis Amasa Walker, some published here for the first time, classified under the heads of Statistics, National Growth, Social Economics, Finance and Taxation, Money and Bimetallism, and Economy Theory.
£350
-
WALRAS, Léon.
Études d’économie sociale (Théorie de la Répartition de la Richesse sociale).
Lausanne and Paris, Rouge and Pichon & Durand-Auzias, 1936.
This, the second, definitive edition differs from the first (1896) in containing the ‘Souvenirs du Congrès de Lausanne’. The congress on taxation in Lausanne in 1860, at which Walras read a paper, was a climacteric in his career. In the audience was Louis Ruchonnet, who later became chief of the...
£100
-
WALRAS, Léon.
Théorie critique de l’impot …
Paris, Guillaumin et Cie, 1861.
First and only edition of Walras’ second published book on economics and an important early testimonial to his profound admiration for, and intellectual identification with, his father. In the lengthy preface, he reviews the ideas contained in the works of Auguste Walras, including the concept of ‘rarety’...
£5750
-
WICKSTEED, Charles.
The Land for the people: how to obtain it and how to manage it. Being an attempt to draw out the lines on which...
London, William Reeves, 1885.
First edition. Wicksteed (1810–1885), a Unitarian minister and father of the economist Phillip Wicksteed, was ‘an erudite and thoughtful man and a popular and important preacher’ (Oxford DNB). He is described on the title of the present work as ‘President of Kettering Liberal Association’....
£100
-
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