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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JOHNSON, Alvin Saunders.
Rent in modern economic theory: an essay in distribution.
Columbia University, 1903.
First edition of Johnson's doctoral dissertation. This work ‘showed unusual skill in solving problems by the dexterous use of classification. Many thinkers, he said were impressed by economic developments which seemed to foretell a new monopolistic order of society. Actually, competition had simply...
£80
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KRUG, Leopold.
Abriss der Staatsökonomie oder Staatswirtschaftslehre.
Berlin, Realschulbuchhandlung, 1808.
Rare first edition. Krug was a civil servant whose writings on political economy and statistics had to be carved out of ‘the odd spare hour’. From 1805 to 1834 he was heavily involved in the development and expansion of the Prussian Statistical Bureau, during which time he conducted numerous statistical...
£350
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LA SALLE, Antoine de.
Méchanique morale, ou essai sur l’art de perfectionner et d’employer ses organes, propres, acquis et...
Geneva, [s.n.], 1789.
Uncommon first edition of La Salle’s wide-ranging work in which he examines, inter alia, understanding, learning, reasoning, syllogism, the Baconian method, asking and answering questions, physiognomy, qualities of character, and eloquence. Having travelled widely in his youth – to Newfoundland,...
£250
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LEGRET G.P.
Rudiment de la comptabilité commerciale A l’usage des jeunes gens qui se destinent au commerce et de tous les négocians...
Paris, Belin fils and le Prieur, 1811.
Scarce first edition of this introduction to bookkeeping for laypeople, addressed by the author to the young who are destined for trade, businessmen and merchants, artisans and manufacturers, and anyone else who fell under the Napoleonic Code de Commerce of 1807, which required businesses to keep...
£375
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[LE MERCIER DE LA RIVIÈRE, Pierre Paul].
Die glückliche Nation, oder der Staat von Felizien. Ein Muster der vollkommensten Freyheit...
Leipzig, Voss, 1794.
Very rare first German edition of Le Mercier de la Rivière’s physiocratic utopia L’heureuse nation, ou Relation du gouvernement des Féliciens, which had first appeared in French in 1792.
£1250
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[LONDON ASSURANCE CORPORATION.]
By-laws, orders, and rules, for the good government of the corporation of the London assurance....
London, [n.p.], 1722.
First edition of the by-laws of the London Assurance Corporation, which, along with The Royal Exchange Assurance Corporation, was constituted and granted sole rights, excepting private individuals, to the granting of assurance and bottomry by ‘The Bubble Act’ of 1720. The right to self-govern, reflected...
£550
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LOWER RATES.
No. 7. Bankers cause War.
London, United ratepayers’ advisory association [1930s].
First and only edition. An authentic copy of the Fascist-sponsored newspaper ‘Lower Rates’, a rare survival from the heyday of Oswald Mosley. Under the headline ‘Bankers cause War’ we see bankers accused of creating all the problems of society, including war-mongering and creating artificial credit.
£130
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[MABBUT, George].
Sir Isaac Newton’s tables for renewing and purchasing the leases of cathedral-churches and colleges, according...
London, printed for Thomas Astley, 1742
Sixth edition, first published in 1686, this issue was sometimes also published with a separate title page and imprint reading, ‘The money’d man’s pocket-book’, London, 1742’ immediately preceding the title-page of the second part. A series of tables calculating the amounts owed on leases based...
£125
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MALTHUS, Thomas Robert.
Principles of political economy considered with a view to their practical application.
London, Murray, 1820.
First edition. The Principles were developed through controversy with Ricardo, especially with regard to the theory of value, but the origins of the essay are in the Essay, which constituted Malthus’s earliest writings on prices, income and savings. The difference that emerges between...
£1400
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[MALTHUS, Thomas Robert].
Art. I - Essay on Political Economy. Supplement to the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Vol. VI. Part I. Edinburgh....
The Quarterly Review Vol. XXX No. LX, January 1824, pp. 298-334.
First edition. A review by Thomas Malthus of John Ramsay McCulloch’s famous essay on political economy.
£100
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MARCHESINI, Marcello.
Saggio d’economia politica, o sia Riflessioni sullo spirito della legislazione relativamente all’agricoltura,...
Napoli, Vincenzo Orsino, 1793.
Very rare first and only edition of a book on economic and social policy by Marcello Marchesini, a scholar from Istria who, having been trained in Venice, took the chair of Political Economy in Naples after Genovesi. Marchesini declares in the title that his book should be regarded as a ‘Spirit of...
£700
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MARSHALL, Alfred.
Official papers.
London, Macmillan for the Royal Economic Society, 1926.
First collected edition of all the written memoranda and oral evidence Marshall prepared on economic questions for government departments and official enquiries, with the exception of his work on the Labour Commission. The collection was edited by Keynes, who provides a preface: ‘generally speaking,...
£150
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MARX, Karl.
Capital. A critical analysis of capitalist production … translated from the third edition by Samuel Moore and Edward...
London, Swan Sonnenschein, Lowrey & Co., 1887.
A remarkably well-preserved copy of the first edition, first issue, one of only five hundred copies (Sraffa), of the English translation of Marx’s Das Kapital, published in London four years after Marx’s death under the editorship of Engels.
£35000
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MARZAGLIA, Gaetano.
Fascetto di pratiche matematiche spiegate alle persone popolari per uso del comercio umano, e civile, in questa...
Verona, Dionisio Ramanzini, 1780.
A lovely copy of the second edition, considerably augmented from the first of 1754, of this book of applied mathematical problems by the Veronese mathematician Gaetano Marzaglia (or Marcegaglia, 1716–1787), heavily influenced by the work of Wolff, who provides the motto to the book, and whose works...
£650
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MCCULLOCH, John Ramsay.
Principes d’économie politique suivis de quelques recherches relatives à leur application et d’un...
Paris, Guillaumin et Cie, 1851.
First and only complete French translation, an association copy signed by the translator for the historian and member of the Académie française Pierre-François Tissot, and afterwards in the library of the economist and statist Michel Chevalier, who like Tissot held a chair at the Collège de France.
£300
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McCULLOCH, John Ramsay, and Augustin PLANCHE (translator).
Principes d’économie politique, suivis de quelques recherches relatives...
Paris, A. Moussin for Guillaumin et Cie, 1863.
French translation of McCulloch’s Principles. First published in 1825, the book provided the first synthetic modern definition of political economy and quickly established itself as one of the most referenced manuals on the subject. ‘For McCulloch was reserved the honour of presenting in a popular...
£200
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MEADE, James Edward (1907-1995), economist.
Autograph manuscript page and accompanying black and white passport photograph.
[c. 1977].
A leaf of autograph manuscript, presumably sent at the request of a collector, giving part of the text of Meade’s Nobel Memorial Lecture, ‘The meaning of “internal balance”’, which he delivered in December 1977. Meade writes: ‘To treat the whole of macro-economic control as a single subject...
£150
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MEGUSCHER, Francesco.
Memoria … in risposta al quesito additare la migliore e più facile maniera per rimittere i boschi nelle...
Milan, presso l’I.R. Istituto, 1847.
First edition of this comprehensive report on the best means to reverse the deforestation of the mountains of Lombardy, in a way that could be both environmentally sustainable and economically profitable.
£950
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MENDONÇA, Manoel Teixeira Cabral de.
O Guarda-livros moderno ou curso completo de instrucções elementares sobre as operações...
Lisbon, Impressão Regia, 1823.
Second edition, corrected and expanded, of vol. I, first editions of vol. II and the Supplemento. The first volume provides a broad overview of the history of commercial exchange, including present practices. Mendonça states that his intention is to demonstrate the benefits of studying geography, insurance,...
£300
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MILLAR, John.
Observations concerning the distinction of ranks in society. Under the following heads: 1. Of the ranks and condition...
London, Murray, 1773.
Second London edition, ‘greatly enlarged’, first published 1771. The first section of Millar’s book is a study of matrilineal ‘savage’ societies, in which early social development counts most when it comes to kinship with the mother, is remarkably prescient (see Morgan, Systems)....
£1450