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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. GIZZI [or GITTIO], Andrea Giuseppe.

    Lo scettro del despota, overo del titolo, e dignità dispotale, discorso istorico,...

    Naples, G. Raillard, 1697.

    Only edition of this extraordinary and rare study of legal, ceremonial, and political roles of the despot, or despotes, a class of prince akin to a king and beneath an emperor in the power structures of both the Byzantine world and Renaissance Italy, and thus a title used both in Venice and...

    £2500

  2. [GOLD and SILVER.] 

    Bando generale per gli orefici, argentieri, ed altri che comprano, vendono, ed in qualsivoglia modo...

    Rome, ‘nella stamperia della Rev. Camera Apostolica’, 1815. 

    Rare edict governing goldsmiths, silversmiths, and traders in gold and silver operating in Rome and the Papal States, issued by Cardinal Bartolomeo Pacca (1756–1844) in January 1815 as Camerlengo to Pope Pius VII.

    £475

  3. [GRANT, Charles, Vicomte de Vaux.]

    Recueil d’Essais, ou précis des opinions, et des mémoires, du Vte de *** …

    A Londres: De l’Imprimerie de T. Spilsbury & Fils. 1793.

    An interesting tract volume, containing the scarce collected thoughts of Charles Grant, vicomte de Vaux (a subscriber’s copy), a fine illustrated guide to Nîmes and the Pont du Gard, and three pamphlets relating to a controversy in the medical faculty in Edinburgh.

    £1500

  4. GRIMKE, Frederick.

    Considerations upon the nature and tendency of free institutions.

    Cincinnati, H. W. Derby & Co., 1884.

    First edition, scarce in commerce, of this ‘significant contribution to American thought’ written by a Supreme Court judge who advocated the ‘popular election of judges for specific terms’ (Supreme Court of Ohio biographies online, ‘Grimke’). Grimke (1791-1862) studied at Yale and Carolina,...

    £850

  5. [GROUVELLE, Philippe-Antoine].

    Reponse a tout! Petit colloque entre un senateur allemand et un républicain francais. Rapporté...

    [s.l, s.n., c .1794].

    First and seemingly only edition of this dialogue on the aftermath of the French revolution, attributed to the playwright, journalist, and diplomat Philippe-Antoine Grouvelle (1758-1806). While the ‘senateur allemand’ is instinctively hostile to the French revolution (‘J’ai l’horreur du nouveau,...

    £375

  6. [HAKEWILL, William].

    The Manner of holding Parliaments in England, collected forth of our ancient Records … With the stately...

    [London,] Printed in the Yeare, 1641.

    First (and only lifetime) edition, signed on the title-page by the notorious forger of ‘Shakespeare’s Library’, William Henry Ireland (1775–1835).

    £950

  7. [HAMILTON, Alexander, James MADISON, and John JAY].

    The Federalist: A Collection of Essays written in Favor of the new Constitution,...

    New York: Printed and sold by John and Andrew M’Lean … 1788.

    First edition in book form of The Federalist Papers, the single most important work of American political philosophy, a normal paper copy, very rare in the original boards, uncut and largely unopened. Volume II is in a mixed state, with the error ‘Letter LXXX’ rather than ‘LXX’...

    £220000

  8. HAREL, Charles.

    Ménage sociétaire ou Moyen d’augmenter son bien-être en diminuant sa dépense, avec indication de quelques...

    Paris, Bureau de la Phalange, à la librairie Sociale, 1839.

    1. First edition of this work by the entrepreneur and inventor Charles Harel (1771-1852), a friend and disciple of Charles Fourier’s. This plan describes Harel’s project for the founding of a community of 200 celibates: a utopia of communal life detailing rules (‘love’, ‘the library’etc.)...

    £975

  9. HARLINGUE, L. [Albert].

    'Baktiaris Persans'.

    [Iran, c. 1905-1911].

    An impressive press image of the Bakhtiari tribe – revolutionaries in the Persian Constitutional Revolution of 1905-1911 – here posing in strength with their weapons. Their leader, Sardar As’ad Bakhtiari (1856-1917), was a key figure in the Iranian revolution; under his command (and with German...

    £1500

  10. 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

  11. HEXHAM, Henry. 

    A Tongue-Combat, lately happening betweene two English Souldiers in the Tilt-boat of Gravesend, the one going...

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

    First edition, written in reply to a rare pamphlet with a near-identical title by Richard Verstegan [or Rowlands], an intelligence agent in the Netherlands for the English Jesuits.  Verstegan’s original Toung-Combat comprised a dialogue between the pro-Catholic Red Scarf and the Protestant...

    £1650

  12. [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

  13. [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

  14. ITALY – PIEVE DI SAN MINIATO DI RUBBIANA.

    Petition to Pope Clement VII, in Latin, on paper, 30 lines in a small Italian notarial...

    The petition explains that the parish of San Miniato in the Valle Rubbiana, in the diocese of Fiesole and in the lay patronage of the Buondelmonti family of Florence, is vacant following the death of the organist Mariotto di Michele Giovanni. The patrons, or the majority of them, or their duly appointed...

    £250

  15. 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

  16. [JULY REVOLUTION.]

    Habitans de Paris, les députés de la France, en ce moment réunis à Paris, m’ont exprimé le desir que...

    [Paris], imprimerie de A. Guyot, [31 July 1830].

    A seemingly unrecorded copy of Louis Philippe’s famous proclamation of 31 July 1830 accepting the position of Lieutenant-Général du Royaume in the wake of the July Revolution. Just days later Charles X would abdicate, and Louis Philippe would be proclaimed King of the French. Less than eighteen years...

    £100

  17. 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

  18. KARG, Stanislaus, Celso EISENMAN, and Eccard HOCHENBAUM.

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

    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.

    £275

  19. 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

  20. 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