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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. AUGUSTINUS TRIUMPHUS [i.e. AUGUSTINUS de Ancona].  

    Summa de potestate ecclesiastica.

    Augsburg, [Johann Schüssler,] 6 March 1473.

    First edition of this highly important...

    £22500

  2. [JUSTICES OF THE PEACE.]

    The Boke of Justices of Peas the Charge...

    ...

    First edition(?), very rare, of the first...

    £27500

  3. IRENICUS, Franciscus.

    Germaniae exegeseos volumina duodecima...

    [(Colophon:) Hagenau, Thomas Anshelm for...

    First editions of a pair of sixteenth-century...

    £3500

  4. ALCIONIO, Pietro.

    Petri Alcyonii Medices legatus de exsilio.

    [Venice, in the house of Aldus Manutius...

    First edition of Alcionio’s dialogue...

    £5750

  5. [PADUA.] 

    Statuta Patavina noviter impressa cum diligenti...

    Venice, Girolamo Giberti, 25 January 1528. 

    An attractive volume of statutes relating...

    £2500

  6. ITALY – PIEVE DI SAN MINIATO DI RUBBIANA.

    Petition to Pope Clement VII, in Latin,...

    The petition explains that the parish of...

    £250

  7. ALBERTI, Leon Battista.

    El Momo. La moral e muy graciosa historia...

    Alcalá de Henares, Joan Mey Flandro, 1553.

    First edition in Spanish of Alberti’s...

    £3800

  8. BUONACCORSI, Biagio, and Niccolò VALORI. 

    Diario de’ successi piu importanti seguiti...

    Florence, Filippo & Jacopo Giunta, 1568. 

    First edition of an insider account of...

    £1000

  9. ASCHAM, Roger.

    A Report and Discourse … of the Affaires...

    London, Printed by John Daye … [1570?].

    First edition. Ascham’s account of his...

    £2000

  10. STAUNFORD [Stanford], William, Sir.

    Les Plees del Coron, Divisees in Plusors...

    [London], Richard Tottell, 1583.

    The definitive edition, and that owned...

    £2500

  11. FULBECKE, William.

    An Historicall Collection of the continuall...

    London, Printed for William Ponsonby. 1601.

    First edition of Fulbecke’s Historicall...

    £5250

  12. [GUNPOWDER PLOT.] William CAMDEN, translator

    Actio in Henricum Garnetum Societatis Iesuiticae...

    London, John Norton, 1607.

    First and only edition in Latin of the...

    £1000

  13. HEXHAM, Henry. 

    A Tongue-Combat, lately happening betweene...

    Printed at London [i.e. Holland].  1623. 

    First edition, written in reply to a rare...

    £1650

  14. [BOUTREUX D’ESTIAU, Jacques de.]

    De la puissance roialle sur la police de...

    Paris, Pierre Durand, 1625.

    A pair of uncommon works defending the...

    £950

  15. [LE MARCHE.]

    Deed relating to the sale of property in...

    [Rome, 1616.]

    A curiously bound public instrument notarised...

    £850

  16. JOHN OF SALISBURY. 

    Policraticus, sive de nugis curialium,...

    Leiden, Joannes Maire, 1639. 

    Attractive Maire edition of the two principal...

    £600

  17. ROHAN, Henri, Duke of; [Henry HUNT, translator].

    A Treatise of the Interest of the Princes...

    London, Richard Hodgkinson, 1641.

    First edition in England (and second in...

    £1800

  18. POSTEL, Guillaume, and Anthonius THYSIUS.

    De Republica, seu magistratibus Atheniensium...

    Leiden, Jean Maire, 1645.

    An uncommon Leiden edition of Postel’s...

    £200

  19. BACON, Francis.

    Opuscula varia posthuma, philosophica,...

    London, R. Daniel, impensis Octaviani...

    First edition, second issue of this collection...

    £1250

  20. BALZAC, Jean-Louis Guez de.

    Aristippus, or, Monsr. de Balsac’s Masterpiece,...

    London, Tho. Newcomb for Nat. Eakins and...

    First edition in English of Balzac’s...

    £750