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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. WARD, Colin.

    Anarchy in Action.

    London, George Allen and Unwin Ltd, 1973.

    First edition. Separating the notion of anarchism from industrial and political struggles, Ward seeks its root in everyday experience. ‘The argument of this book is that an anarchist society, a society which organizes itself without authority, is always in existence, like a seed beneath the...

    £190

  2. WAYLAND, Francis.

    The Elements of political Economy.

    New York, Leavitt, Lord & Company, 1837. 

    First edition of an important work long held as the leading principal economics text in American colleges. Wayland (1796–1865) was for twenty-eight years president of Brown University. ‘His notions of political economy and philanthropy dictated that the most important obligations of the state...

    £500

  3. WEBER, Max.

    Der Sozialismus.

    Vienna, Phobus, Pimmer, 1918.

    First edition of Weber’s early and influential lecture articulating the author’s sceptical view on socialism.

    £300

  4. [WEST INDIES – DENMARK.]

    The Danish laws: or, the code of Christian the Fifth. Faithfully translated for the use of the English...

    London, N. Gibson, 1756.

    First English translation of the parts of Christian V’s Danske Lov of 1683 that were relevant to the inhabitants of the Danish West Indies (the present-day U.S. Virgin Islands, plus the islands of St Thomas, St John, and St Croix).

    £850

  5. [WESTMINSTER ELECTION.]

    A True and impartial Collection of Pieces, in Prose and Verse, which have been written and published on...

    London: Printed for W. Owen … 1749.

    First edition of a compilation of open letters to the electorate of Westminster, written during the violent 1749 election campaign.

    £750

  6. WHITTAKER, Roger, and Natalie WHITTAKER.

    So far, so good. The autobiography of a wandering Minstrel.

    London, Colombus Books, 1986.

    Limited edition, copy no. 9 (of an unspecified number), in a special binding, inscribed ‘To Mom & Dad with all our love Roger x’.

    £250

  7. WOOLF, Leonard.

    Socialism and Co-Operation.

    London, National Labour Press, 1921.

    First edition. In the interwar period Woolf was ‘a patient and committed advocate for a cooperative model of participatory, rank-and-file democracy founded on the organization and practices of the Co-operative Movement, whose socialist, transformative aspirations Woolf found most fully realized...

    £180

  8. ZECH, Franz Xaver.

    Hierarchia ecclesiastica, ad Germaniae Catholicae principia et usum delineata.

    Ingolstadt, Schleig, 1750.

    First edition of a comprehensive exposition of the prerogatives, duties, jurisdiction, authority and responsibilities of the secular and regular German Catholic clergy. Forty tituli set out the legal profiles and relative hierarchy of pope, patriarchs, cardinals, envoys, bishops, canons, members of religious...

    £175