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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. 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

  2. KRUMP, Epiphanius.

    Analysis syllogistica seu theses Scoto-logicae de syllogismo in communi, ac resolutione eiusdem in ea, ex quibus...

    Ingolstadt, Thomas Grass, 1695.

    Very rare thesis on the syllogism, by the Scotist Franciscan philosopher and theologian Epiphanius Krump, with students including Massaeus Kresslinger (1672-1742), who went on to publish a number of works on canon law and moral theology. Here, Krump discusses predicates, the basic rules of syllogisms,...

    £175

  3. LA SALLE, Antoine de.

    Méchanique morale, ou essai sur l’art de perfectionner et d’employer ses organes, propres, acquis et...

    Geneva, [s.n.], 1789.

    Uncommon first edition of La Salle’s wide-ranging work in which he examines, inter alia, understanding, learning, reasoning, syllogism, the Baconian method, asking and answering questions, physiognomy, qualities of character, and eloquence. Having travelled widely in his youth – to Newfoundland,...

    £250

  4. LA SERRE, Jean-Puget de.

    Grab-Statt der weltlichen Ergötzlichkeiten, einstens in Französischer Sprache zubereitet … anjetzt...

    Regensburg, Johann Conrad Peetz und Bader, 1738.

    First edition in German of Tombeau des délices du monde, by the French dramatist and historian Jean-Puget de la Serre (1594–1665).

    £375

  5. LEGGE, James. 

    The Chinese Classics: with a translation, critical and exegetical notes, prolegomena, and copious indexes … In...

    Hong Kong, at the author’s; London, Trübner & Co., 1861 [– 1865]. 

    First editions of the first four volumes of Legge’s monumental Chinese Classics, with parallel Chinese and English texts, detailed introductions, notes, and indexes. 

    £3750

  6. LEWIS, Wyndham.

    One-Way Song. With a Foreword by T. S. Eliot.

    London, Methuen, [1960].

    Second edition, ostensibly an unaltered reprint of the first edition of 1933, but in fact with some changes. Eliot’s foreword is new to this edition. Bridson had reviewed the original edition uncharitably as ‘versified pamphleteering’ in Poetry XLV: 3 (Dec 1934), accusing it of being a satirical...

    £150

  7. LOCKE, John. 

    [An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding].  Extrait d’un Livre Anglois qui n’est pas encore publié, intitulé...

    Amsterdam, Wolfgang, Waesbergi, Boom, & Van Someren, 1688. 

    A substantial and extremely influential extract, published two years before the appearance of the book, of Locke’s Essay concerning human understanding: a publication of major consequence in the history of philosophy.  This issue of the Bibliothèque universelle et historique also...

    £2850

  8. LOCKE, John, and Francis BACON.

    The conduct of the understanding. Essays, moral, economical, & political.

    London, C. Daly, [c.1850].

    A good copy of this surprisingly rare printing of two works by Locke and Bacon, printed by Charles Daly, who also printed works by, inter alia, Coleridge, Combe, and Swift. One issue had appeared in 1841, with the address of Red Lion Square; the current issue is undated, with an address in Greville Street,...

    £125

  9. LOWER RATES.

    No. 7. Bankers cause War.

    London, United ratepayers’ advisory association [1930s].

    First and only edition. An authentic copy of the Fascist-sponsored newspaper ‘Lower Rates’, a rare survival from the heyday of Oswald Mosley. Under the headline ‘Bankers cause War’ we see bankers accused of creating all the problems of society, including war-mongering and creating artificial credit.

    £130

  10. LUCRETIUS. 

    Titi Lucretii Cari de rerum natura libri VI.  Ad optimorum exemplarium veritatem exacti.  Quae praeterea in hac...

    Padua, Giuseppe Comino [for Volpi], 2 January 1721. 

    First Volpi–Comino edition of Lucretius’s famous materialist and Epicurean poem, the most notable Italian edition of the eighteenth century.  The present work is the product of the long-running and fruitful collaboration between the printer Giuseppe Comino and the scholars Giovanni Antonio...

    £450

  11. [LUZAC, Elie, attributed].

    L’homme plus que machine.

    ‘A Londres’ [Leiden?], 1748.

    First edition of this attack against materialism and La Mettrie’s L’homme machine, published in the same year. The work was included in the 1774 edition of the Oeuvres of La Mettrie, volume III.

    £250

  12. [MACEDO, José Agostino de, editor].

    Jornal encyclopédico de Lisboa, coordenado pelo P. J. A. de M. Tomo primeiro [-segundo].

    Nos 1-12 (Janiero – Dezembro de 1820). Lisboa, impressão Regia, 1820.

    First edition, complete, of this rare periodical, edited and in large part written by the prolific writer, pamphleteer, court preacher, and controversialist José Agostoni de Macedo (1761-1831).

    £1250

  13. MAINE DE BIRAN. [MARIE FRANÇOIS PIERRE GONTHIER DE BIRAN.]

    Influence de l’Habitude sur la Faculté de Penser.

    Paris, Henrichs, 1803.

    First edition of Maine de Biran’s first major work, in which he draws a distinction between what he calls passive habits, i.e. sensations and impressions which become dulled with repetition, and active habits, i.e. those which are conscious, and willed. “The effect of this, which was borne out by...

    £2000

  14. [MASCHERANA, Girolamo.]

    Concordia tra la società e la religione ossia Difesa del culto cattolico contro chi lo calunnia in contrasto...

    Milan, Cesare Orena nella stamperia Malatesta, 1798.

    Rare second edition, printed in the same year as the equally rare first, of this curious defence of religion in the light of the constitution of the Cisalpine Republic, in which the author seeks to demonstrate the compatibility of Catholicism with the Enlightenment ideals of the French Revolution and...

    £375

  15. MENDELSSOHN, Moses.

    Jerusalem oder über religiöse Macht und Judenthum.

    Frankfurt and Leipzig, n. p., 1787.

    First posthumous edition, originally published in 1783 by Friedrich Maurer in Berlin, of this later work by Mendelssohn (1729–1786), in which he supports religious and political toleration, and advocates separation of church and state and civil equality for Jews. The work was reprinted as recently as 2001.

    £200

  16. MENDELSSOHN, Moses. 

    Philosophische Schriften. 

    Troppau, Joseph Georg Traßler, 1784. 

    Later edition, in an attractive contemporary binding, of the works of the German-Jewish philosopher Moses Mendelssohn (1729–1786). First published in 1761 and here reprinted in the Silesian city of Troppau (now Opawa, Czechia), the collection includes Über die Empfindungen, Philosophische...

    £250

  17. MILL, John Stuart.

    The Subjection of Women.

    London: Longmans, Green, 1869.

    First edition of ‘the last of [Mill’s] great political tracts’ (ODNB), one of the most important and controversial treatments of women’s rights in the nineteenth century. Mill was heavily involved in the women’s suffragette movement, and in this work he argued ‘that the principle which...

    £3400

  18. MILL, John Stuart.

    A szabadságról ... Angolból forditotta és az elöszót irta Kállay Béni.

    Pest, Kiadja Ráth Mór, 1867.

    First Hungarian edition of John Stuart Mill’s great essay On Liberty, with a lengthy introduction by the Austro-Hungarian statesman Béni Kállay (1839–1903). First published in 1859, Mill’s vastly influential essay was dedicated to his wife Harriet who had provided the stimulus for...

    £450

  19. MILL, John Stuart, and Nakamura MASANAO, translator.

    自由之理. On Liberty.

    Suruga (i.e. Shizuoka), [Kihira Ken’ichiro,] 1871 [i.e. 1872].

    First Japanese translation of Mill’s On Liberty, published twelve years after the first English edition, and very popular in Japan as a result of this translation by the philosopher and educator Nakamura Masanao (1832–1891).

    £2500

  20. [MONASTICISM].

    Risposta ad alcuni aggravi fatti ai monaci nel libro, che ha il titolo di Politica, diritto, e religione.

    Milan, Francesco Agnelli, 1742.

    Only edition of this anonymous response to Giuseppe Gorini Corio’s controversial Politica, diritto, e religione, that had appeared in Milan at the start of the same year.

    £400