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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. [HARRINGTON, James.]

    The commonwealth of Oceana.

    London, printed for J. Streater, 1656.

    First edition, first issue. ‘Oceana presents Harrington’s vision of the ideal state: an aristocracy of limited, balanced powers. Harrington believed that democracy is most stable where a strong middle class exists and that revolution is a consequence of the separation of economic and political power....

    £3750

  2. HARRIS, James, later first Earl of Malmesbury.

    A small group of documents.

    [1779–1785].

    Harris (1746–1820) was ‘the leading British diplomatist of the final quarter of the eighteenth century’, noted for his skills as a linguist, and his popularity and easy social skills.

    £325

  3. HOFFMANN VON FALLERSLEBEN, August Heinrich.

    Unpolitische Lieder.

    Hamburg, Hoffmann and Campe, 1840–1. [bound with:]

    First edition of each work. Hoffmann (1784–1874), self-ennobled ‘von Fallersleben’, was first librarian (1823) and then professor of German language and literature (1830) at the University of Breslau, before his dismissal in 1842 due to the politically sensitive content of the supposedly Unpolitischen...

    £100

  4. [HOLBERG, Ludvig, Baron].

    Nicolai Klimii Iter Subterraneum novam telluris theoriam...

    Copenhagen and Leipzig, Jacob Preuss, 1741.

    First edition of a classic utopian novel, the archetypal journey to the centre of the Earth.

    £500

  5. HUTTEAU, Jean Baptiste Louis Philippe.

    Trattato dei contratti per le condotte di terra e di acqua reso conforme al codice civile...

    Milan, Francesco Sonzogno, 1806.

    A lovely copy of this rare Italian translation of a treatise by the French lawyer Jean Baptiste Hutteau (1765–1855) on the laws relating to the transport of goods, whether by road or by water, in the light of the new Napoleonic Code civil. The work describes the ways in which goods should be handed...

    £225

  6. [INDUSTRIOUS POOR, Charitable Corporation for the Relief of.]

    The present state of the unhappy sufferers of the Charitable Corporation...

    London, [n.p.], 1733.

    First and only edition of an anonymous plea to Parliament for the rescue of the Charitable Corporation for the Relief of the Industrious Poor, a pawnbroker which granted credit at low interest to the ‘deserving poor’ who left a pledge. Founded in 1707, in the 1720s the Corporation came under scrutiny...

    £250

  7. [ISELIN, ISAAK].

    Träume eines Menschenfreundes. Erster Theil.

    Basel, Johannes Schweighauser, 1776.

    First edition, part one only (very rarely to be found complete with both parts), of the most mature expression of Iselin’s anti-Rousseau republicanism, a social ‘dream’ of great articulation and -arguably- applicability, residing confidently on the borderline between utopia and reformism, and the...

    £150

  8. JOHN OF SALISBURY. 

    Policraticus, sive de nugis curialium, et vestigiis philosophorum, libri octo.  Accedit huic editioni eiusdem...

    Leiden, Joannes Maire, 1639. 

    Attractive Maire edition of the two principal works of the twelfth-century scholar, diplomat, and bishop of Chartres, John of Salisbury, both completed by 1159 and dedicated to Thomas Becket. 

    £600

  9. KANT, Immanuel.

    Kritika chistago razuma …

    St Petersburg, M.V. Popov, 1902.

    Third Russian edition of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, first published in German in 1781, and in Russian in 1867, in the translation by N. Sokolov which had first appeared in 1897.

    £450

  10. KARG, Stanislaus (pr.), Celso EISENMAN and Eccard HOCHENBAUM (resp.).

    Fur theologicè examinatus, & in judicio sacramentali ad...

    Munich, Johann Lucas Straub, 1712.

    Only edition, rare, of this dissertation on the theological and legal aspects of theft and restitution, presented to the distinguished canon lawyer, and author of the monumental Manuale theologico-canonico-legale practicum, Stanislaus Karg. Divided into four sections, the work examines the nature of...

    £275

  11. KAUTSKY, Karl.

    O istocie klasowości.

    [Krakow, People’s Printers] for “Proletaryat”, no date [1903].

    Rare first edition in Polish of Kautsky’s Klasseninteresse – Sonderinteresse – Gemeininteresse, first published in vol. XXI (numbers 34 and 35, 1902-03) of the leading German theoretical periodical Die Neue Zeit. The article, written as a refutation of Bernstein’s revisionism, discusses the antagonistic...

    £125

  12. KRUGER, (Paul) Stephanus Johannes Paulus.

    Printed document signed, granting land in the town of Volksrust to Gideon Jacobus Johannes...

    Pretoria, April 1897 and 5 May 1897.

    A printed document signed by Paul Kruger as president of South Africa.

    £500

  13. 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

  14. [LAW.]

    The Law of Commons and Commoners, or a Treatise shewing the Original and Nature of Common, and several Kinds thereof ...

    London, assigns of Richard and Edward Atkins for John Walthoe, 1698.

    First edition of an unattributed popular treatise on the law of common land. The text discusses, with reference to and explanations of previous cases, ‘the daily Controversies that arise about the Rights and Titles of Commoning, the Torts and Damages done to Commoners, and the various Prescriptions...

    £250

  15. LAWRENCE, James Henry. 

    A Picture of Verdun, or the English Detained in France … from the Portfolio of a Detenu. 

    London, T. Hookham junior & E.T. Hookham, 1810. 

    First edition of this remarkable account of life among the British prisoners in Napoleonic Verdun, following the mass arrest of English residents in and visitors to France. 

    £600

  16. LEIBNIZ, Gottfried Wilhelm.

    Oeuvres de Leibniz publiées pour la première fois d’après les manuscrits originaux avec notes...

    Paris, Firmin Didot, 1859-1875.

    A handsome seven-volume edition of the correspondence and historical and political writings of the German polymath Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716), the ‘last universal genius’, edited by Louis-Alexandre Foucher de Careil (1826–1891), with texts in French, German, and Latin. The second volume...

    £250

  17. [LE MARCHE.] 

    Deed relating to the sale of property in Beltrovato (a district of Morrovalle in the Province of Macerata in the...

    [Rome, 1616.] 

    A curiously bound public instrument notarised by the Apostolic Camera in Rome detailing the sale of property belonging to two brothers from the influential de’ Mozzi family of Macerata. 

    £850

  18. [LE NOBLE, Pierre, and Eustache LE NOBLE (attributed).] 

    Les Amours d’Anne d’Austriche, Epouse de Louis 13. ...

    ‘A Cologne, Chez Pierre Marteau, 1696’ [France, early eighteenth century]. 

    An early manuscript copy of a salacious – and treasonous – history arguing that Louis XIV was the illegitimate child of Anne of Austria and Cardinal Richelieu, bound with four engravings. 

    £850

  19. LEWIS, Wyndham. 

    Doom of Youth …

    London, Chatto & Windus, 1932. 

    First English edition, one of Lewis’s scarcest works (only 549 copies avoided destruction).  Doom of Youth began life as a series of seven articles on youth politics in Time and Tide in June–July 1931, rounded off with a pair by G.K. Chesterton; it was expanded and first published...

    £2000

  20. LEWIS, Wyndham.

    The Old Gang and the New Gang.

    London, Desmond Harmsworth, 1933.

    First edition, binding variant (1), a work on ‘youth cults’ and the rise of European dictatorships. Bridson’s review was not especially complimentary, noting ‘that peculiar “kiddish” idiom which Mr. Lewis uses to advantage in his satiric novels and to little purpose elsewhere … We can excuse...

    £250