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.
-
AUGUSTINUS TRIUMPHUS [i.e. AUGUSTINUS de Ancona].
Summa de potestate ecclesiastica.
Augsburg, [Johann Schüssler,] 6 March 1473.
First edition of this highly important and influential magnum opus of political theory, a defence of papal supremacy.
£22500
-
ANTONIUS de Vercellis.
Sermones quadragesimales de XII mirabilibus Christianae fidei excellentiis [with additions by Ludovicus...
Venice, Johannes and Gregorius de Gregoriis, de Forlivio, [for Alexander Calcedonius], 16 February 1492/93.
A remarkable copy of the first edition of Antonius de Vercellis’ sermons, owned and annotated by three contemporary Franciscans, one of whom, Andrea Alamanni, may be the confessor who administered Machiavelli’s last rites.
£8500
-
BONET, Nicolas.
Habes Nicholai Bonetti viri p[er]spicacissimi quattuor volumina: Metaphysicam videl[icet] naturale[m] phylosophia[m]...
Venice, Boneto Locatello for the heirs of Ottaviano Scoto, 1505.
First collected edition of the works of the French Franciscan Friar Nicolas Bonet (c. 1280–1343), owned and annotated by the Italian historian, biographer, and physician Paolo Giovio (1486–1552).
£4000
-
PONTANO, Giovanni.
De rebus coelestibus.
Naples, ‘ex officina Sigismundi Mayr Germani : summo ingenio artificis Ioannetto Salodio : Antonio Vuerengrundt : Evangelista Papiensi :...
First editions of three works on cosmology, ethics, and astrology by the Neapolitan humanist, poet, and polymath Giovanni Pontano (1426–1503), an important sammelband from the celebrated library of Ulisse Aldrovandi (1522–1605), professor of natural philosophy and natural history at the University...
£11000
-
DOMINICUS DE FLANDRIA.
Dominici de Flandria ordinis predicator[um] artium et theologie doctoris in divi Thome de Aq[ui]no co[m]mentaria...
Venice, Giorgio Arrivabene for the heirs of Ottaviano Scoto, 25 January 1514.
Scarce early editions of two Aristotelian commentaries. The first, by the Dominican philosopher Dominic of Flanders (c. 1425–1479), analyses two works by Thomas Aquinas: his commentary on Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics (on the nature of scientific axioms), and his De fallaciis...
£3000
-
ERASMUS, Desiderius.
Paraclesis, id est adhortio ad sanctissimum ac saluberrimum Cristianae philosophiae studium …
Basel, Johann Froben, February 1520.
Attractive contemporary Erasmus sammelband, superbly eloquent in its physical union of three treatises without which the humanist’s Praise of Folly would risk gross misinterpretation.
£5500
-
APULEIUS, Lucius.
L. Apuleii Metamorphoseos, sive lusus Asini libri XI. Floridoru[m] IIII. De deo Socratis I. De philosophia...
Venice, ‘in aedibus Aldi et Andreae Soceri’, May 1521.
First Aldine edition of the works of the second-century AD Numidian novelist Apuleius, with the editio princeps of Alcinous’s second-century handbook on Plato’s philosophy in the original Greek, from the library of the great French writer Victor Hugo.
£2000
-
SENECA, Lucius Annaeus.
L. Annei Senecae opera, et ad dicendi facultatem, et ad bene vivendu[m] utilissima, per Des. Erasmum Roterod....
Basel, ‘in officina Frobeniana’, 1529 [(colophon:) Basel, Johann Herwagen, March 1537].
Second Erasmus edition of the moral essays and letters of Seneca, owned and annotated by Ludovicus Carinus (d. 1569), friend and later foe of Erasmus himself.
£5000
-
EUSTRATIUS of Nicaea, et al.
Ευστρατιου και αλλων τινων επισημων υπομνηματα εις...
[(Colophon:) Venice, heirs of Aldus Manutius and Andrea Torresano, July 1536.]
Editio princeps of the Greek commentaries on Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics by Eustratius of Nicaea, Michael of Ephesus, the Peripatetic philosopher Aspasius, and other anonymous scholiasts, published by the Aldine press, annotated by a contemporary scholar.
£5500
-
CASTELLESI, Adriano.
Hadriani cardinalis de vera philosophia libri IIII ex quatuor ecclesiae doctoribus conscripti, varia eruditione...
Cologne, Melchior von Neuss, 1540.
A fine sammelband of theological works, with interesting provenance. The De vera philosophia (first published Bologna, 1507) is the most important work of the Italian cardinal and English agent in Rome, Adriano Castellesi (c.1461–1521). ‘The dedication to Henry VII suggests that...
£1750
-
[GALEN.] STEPHANUS.
Stephani Atheniensis philosophi explanationes in Galeni priorem librum therapeuticum ad Glauconem, Augustino...
Venice, Giunta, November 1554.
First edition of Agostino Gadaldini’s Latin translation of Galen’s medical treatise Ad Glauconem and of Stephanus’ commentary upon it, enhanced with his own scholia.
£950
-
GROUCHY, Nicolas de.
Praeceptiones dialecticae, Nicolao Gruchio Rotomagensi authore. Disputatio eiusdem, quid de nomine dialectices...
Paris, Gabriel Buon, 1563.
An apparently unrecorded edition of Grouchy’s abstract of his lectures on logic and Aristotelian dialectic. The philologist Nicolas de Grouchy (1510–1572) spent twelve years in Bordeaux (1535-47) as professor of rhetoric at the Collège de Guyenne (the top class was called ‘Classe de Rhétorique’),...
£750
-
DOLCE, Lodovico.
Somma della filosofia d’Aristotele, e prima della dialettica.
Venice, Giovanni Battista, & Marchio Sessa, & fratelli, [1565].
First edition of this exposition of Aristotle’s dialectics, moral, and natural philosophy by one of the most significant poligrafi and artistic theorists of the cinquecento, intended for a non-specialist readership.
£2500
-
DIOGENES LAERTIUS, [and Henri ESTIENNE (editor)].
Περι βίων, δογμάτων και αποφθεγμων...
[Geneva,] Henri Estienne, 1570.
First Estienne edition of The Lives of the Philosophers, a very important edition in the original Greek, ‘in which appear for the first time many passages discovered in manuscripts by Estienne’. ‘The volume also contains thirty-six pages of important textual annotations by Henri Estienne,...
£1400
-
CHRYSOSTOM, John.
[Opera: Homeliae.] Que in secundo Ioannis Chrisostomi volumine continentur: Super Mattheum homelie 89 …...
Venice, Stagnino & de Gregoriis, 1503.
First edition of Chrysostom’s Opera omnia, the second volume (of two), annotated throughout by two critical readers.
£2800
-
[ARISTOTLE.]
Disputations on Aristotle’s Organon.
Milan, 1600-1601.
An interesting manuscript comprising disputations on the first four works of Aristotle’s Organon, covering logical analysis and dialectic, compiled by a Milanese student at the turn of the seventeenth century.
£1250
-
EUNAPIUS.
Ευναπιου του Σαρδιανου βιοι φιλοσοφων και σοφιστων … De vitis philosophorum...
‘Cologne’ [but Geneva?], Samuel Crispin, 1616.
Very uncommon edition of the twenty-four biographies of Eunapius of Sardis (b. 347?), valuable as a source for the neo-Platonic, and anti-Christian, philosophy of the fourth century; among his subjects were Plotinus, Porphyry, Iamblichus, and Epiphanius. The Latin translation is by Hadrianus Junius.
£450
-
DONNE, John.
Devotions upon Emergent Occasions, and severall Steps in my Sicknes ...
London, Printed for Thomas Jones … 1627.
Third (and last lifetime) edition of Donne’s most familiar prose work, composed during his convalescence in 1623–4 from the ‘spotted Feaver’ which nearly killed him. It consists of twenty-three ‘Stationes, sive Periodi in Morbo’, each comprising a meditation, expostulation, and prayer.
£13500
-
CICERO, Marcus Tullius.
De Officiis … libri tres. Item, de amicitia: de senectute: paradoxa: & de somnio Scipionis. Cum indice...
London, [Felix Kingston for] the Stationers’ Company, 1631.
London edition of the ‘greatest hits’ of Cicero for the early seventeenth century: De Officiis, ‘Laelius on friendship’, ‘Cato Major on old age’, the Stoic Paradoxes, and the Dream of Scipio from De Republica, with the notes of Erasmus, who was famously an admirer of...
£600
-
BACON, Francis.
Francisci Baconi, Baronis de Verulamio, Vice-Comitis Sancti Albani, operum moralium et civilium tomus … cura...
London, Edward Griffin [and John Haviland] for Richard Whitaker [and John Norton], 1638.
First edition, first issue, a copy from the celebrated Albani library: tangible witness to the early and fecund reception of Bacon’s thought in the circles of Galilean science in Italy.
£3500