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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PIECK, Henri C.
10 Dagen Die De Wereld Deden Wankelen.
Amsterdam, Skovino, 1927.
A rare lithograph of Pieck’s dramatic illustration for Ten Days that Shook the World (October in English), a silent film commissioned by the Soviet government to commemorate the 10-year anniversary of the October Revolution. Made by the director of Battleship Potemkin (1925), Sergei Eisenstein, the...
£300
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PITTER, Přemysl.
Domovu i exilu [Home and Exile].
London, Čechoslovák-FCI, [1956].
First editions, association copies, of a series of radio transcripts by the humanitarian Protestant lay preacher and educator Přemysl Pitter (1895–1976), often described as the ‘forgotten Czech Schindler’, owned by the Czech-Jewish poet, novelist, and Holocaust survivor H.G. Adler.
£850
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POEMS ON AFFAIRS OF STATE:
from the Time of Oliver Cromwell, to the Abdication of K. James the Second. Written by the greatest...
Printed in the Year 1702
Fourth edition of this popular collection of witty verse and political satire, with the second edition of State-Poems continued (1697). Much of the poetry collected here was initially circulated in manuscript because of its political subject matter (which includes the Dutch wars, the Popish Plot, and...
£425
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PORTER, [Jane].
Aphorisms of Sir Philip Sidney; with Remarks, by Miss Porter …
London, Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, 1807.
First edition, uncommon, of a collection of aphorisms and observations drawn from Sidney’s prose works, edited and with additional commentary by the novelist Jane Porter (1775–1850).
£600
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[PORTUGAL.]
Centro dei Comunisti. Lotta di classe e potere politico in Portogallo (Quaderni Comunisti).
Rome, 26 September 1975.
An historical overview of the Portuguese ‘Carnation Revolution’ of 25 April 1974 and its aftermath, including a reproduction of João Abel Manta’s famous poster showing Vasco Gonçalves, Portugal’s prime minister, with his arms around a member of the MFA (Movimento das Forças Armadas)...£100
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POSTEL, Guillaume, and Anthonius THYSIUS.
De Republica, seu magistratibus Atheniensium liber … Accessit Antonii Thysii IC. Discursus...
Leiden, Jean Maire, 1645.
An uncommon Leiden edition of Postel’s study of the Athenian magistracy, first published 1541 and revised and enlarged in 1551. Jean Ballesdens edited an edition for Maire in 1635; this 1645 edition added an essay on the same topic by the librarian and historian Anthony Thysius the Younger (1603–1665),...
£200
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PURSEY, Thomas.
The last General Assembly of the Free Church of Scotland.
[Edinburgh, T. Pursey, 1900.]
A photographic tour-de-force, assembling many hundreds of individual photographic portraits neatly incorporated into a painted scenario, and then reproduced as a photogravure, depicting all the attendees of the last General Assembly of the Free Church of Scotland, held in May 1900. Evidently a...
£2000
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RENTSCH, Carl, Edler von Ehrenthal.
Die Staatswirtschaft nach Naturgesetzen.
Leipzig, Brockhaus, 1819.
First edition. Rentsch’s political economy offers an in-depth analysis of concepts such as income and expenditure, value and cost, market value, and competition; particular attention is paid to coin, notes, circulation, public and private credit, and exchange.
£150
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[RICHARD, Charles-Louis.]
Lettres d’un archevêque, à l’auteur de la brochure intitulée: Du droit du souverain sur les biens-fonds...
A Cologne, 1770.
First edition, uncommon, of this response to an anticlerical essay by the Chevalier de Cerfvol by the Dominican theologian and anti-philosophe Charles-Louis Richard (1711–1794). De Cherfvol had argued against the wealth of the clergy, and in particular of the religious orders, and proposed a means...
£200
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ROHAN, Henri, Duke of; [Henry HUNT, translator].
A Treatise of the Interest of the Princes and States of Christendome....
London, Richard Hodgkinson, 1641.
First edition in England (and second in English) of this groundbreaking work on political interest and the balance of power by the leader of the Huguenots, this copy with hitherto unnoticed printing variants.
£1800
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[ROUSSEL DE LA TOUR, Claude Pierre GOUJET, and Abbé MINARD, editors.]
Extraits des assertions dangereuses et pernicieuses...
Paris, Pierre-Guillaume Simon, 1762.
First edition of this systematic selection of Jesuit writings intended to demonstrate the many dangerous ideas endorsed by the Order, arranged under headings including probabilism, simony, blasphemy, sacrilege, magic, astrology, idolatry, perjury, homicide, and regicide.
£1500
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[ROYAL LUSTRING COMPANY.]
The Report of the Committee of the House of Commons, to whom the Petition of the Royal Lustring-Company...
London, E. Whitlock, 1698.
First edition; a French version appeared the same year. Since its foundation in 1688, the Royal Lustring Company (importers of ‘lustrings’ or ‘alamodes’ – a fine, light, glossy, black silk) had enjoyed special monopolistic privileges which it had exploited to the full. However, by the end...
£275
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RUGE, Arnold, and Clair James GRECE, Paul NERRLICH (ed.).
Unser System ... Herausgegeben von C. J. Grece, LL.D. Zum 100. Geburtstage...
Frankfurt, Neuer Frankfurter Verlag, 1903.
A rare celebrative reprint of the most detailed exposition of Arnold Ruge’s philosophy (originally published in 1850).
£100
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[SAINTE-HILAIRE, Émile Marco de.]
Réclamation addressée à S. Ece. Mgr. Delavau, préfet de police, par Modeste Agnès, patentée...
Paris, chez les marchands de nouveautés, 1821.
Rare first edition of this work on Parisian prostitution, attributed to the writer and journalist Émile Marco de Sainte-Hilaire (1796–1887). The Réclamation is presented as a letter from the prostitute Modeste Agnès to the newly-appointed Paris chief of police, Guy Delavau (1787–1874),...
£850
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SAY, Léon.
[cover title: ] La Société coopérative est la meilleure des caisses d’épargne.
Lille, L. Danel, [1866?].
First edition. Léon Say (1826–1896), grandson of Jean-Baptiste Say, ‘became one of the most prominent statesmen of the French Third Republic. He served as Finance Minister from 1872 to 1879, and again in 1882, overseeing the largest financial operation of the century – payment of war reparations...
£75
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SCHUMACHER, H., Professor.
Autograph letter signed (‘H. Schumacher’) to a colleague.
Bonn, den Coblenzerstrasse 83, 10 February 1915.
Schumacher’s spirited response to a colleague who had asked for Schumacher’s opinion on a letter he intended to publish in an American newspaper. Schumacher charges him with completely misunderstanding both the political situation and public opinion in the USA. He criticises the German attitude towards...
£150
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[SEX-WORK.]
Arrêtés des 3 et 4 Juin 1833, concernant les femmes et filles livrées à la prostitution publique.
Toulon, ‘de l’imprimerie d’Aug. Aurel’, 1833.
An apparently unrecorded set of decrees intended to regulate sex-work in the French port of Toulon on the Mediterranean coast, ‘for the maintenance of good morals and public health’.
£475
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SMITH, William.
The Speeches of Mr. Smith, of South Carolina, delivered in the House of Representatives of the United States, in...
Philadelphia printed, London reprinted for John Stockdale, 1794.
First London edition, a rebuff to the punitive anti-British tariffs proposed by the future President James Madison, first printed in Philadelphia in the same year and also reprinted in Edinburgh.
£175
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SSYL’NYM I ZAKLIUCHENNYM.
St. Petersburg, [Vol’naia Tipografiia for “Shipovnik”], 1907.
Rare first edition of this anthology of stories, novellas and poems by Russian authors; a publication intended to raise funds in support of the exiled and imprisoned (as the title translates), the victims of the Tsarist reaction after the 1905 revolution. Among the mainly socially oriented and neo-realistic...
£350
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STATUTA COLLEGII DD.
Almae Urbis Medicorum ex antiquis Romanorum Pontificum bullis congesta, & hactenùs per Sedem Apostolicam...
Rome, Printer of the Apostolic Chamber, 1676 [– c.1745].
The very rare enlarged and updated issue of the statutes of the medical faculty of Rome, a very rare and interesting document on its internal organization.
£550