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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ALCIONIO, Pietro.
Petri Alcyonii Medices legatus de exsilio.
[Venice, in the house of Aldus Manutius...
First edition of Alcionio’s dialogue...
£5750
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ANTONIUS de Vercellis.
Sermones quadragesimales de XII mirabilibus...
Venice, Johannes and Gregorius de Gregoriis,...
A remarkable copy of the first edition...
£8500
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[ARISTOTLE.]
Disputations on Aristotle’s Organon.
Milan, 1600-1601.
An interesting manuscript comprising disputations...
£1250
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[ARISTOTLE – ELIAS.]
Biblioteca Armeno-Georgica. I. Commentarii...
St Petersburg, Academiae Imperialis Scientarum,...
Uncommon edition, published by the Imperial...
£250
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AUGUSTINUS TRIUMPHUS [i.e. AUGUSTINUS de Ancona].
Summa de potestate ecclesiastica.
Augsburg, [Johann Schüssler,] 6 March 1473.
First edition of this highly important...
£22500
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BACON, Francis.
Historia vitae et mortis.
Amsterdam, Johannes van Ravesteyn, 1663.
Pocket-sized Amsterdam editions of three...
£975
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BACON, Francis.
Opuscula varia posthuma, philosophica,...
London, R. Daniel, impensis Octaviani...
First edition, second issue of this collection...
£1250
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[BALDELLI, Giovanni Battista].
Elogio di Niccolò Machiavelli.
Londra, 1794.
Uncommon first edition of this speech in...
£325
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[BARSANTI, Pier Vincenzo.]
Della futura rinnovazione de’ cieli e...
[Florence,] Stamperia Bonducciana, 1780.
First edition of this polemical utopia...
£675
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BEAUMONT, Gustave-Auguste de la Bonninière de.
Autograph letter signed (‘Gustave de...
Birmingham, 27 June [1835].
A warm and personal autograph documenting...
£350
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[BENDISCIOLI, Faustino.]
Quadro ossia saggio epilogato del Sistema...
Milan, Stamperia [dei Patrioti d’Italia]...
An impassioned tract attacking the claims...
£200
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BERKELEY, George.
Traktat o nachalakh chelovecheskogo znaniia.
St Petersburg, O. N. Popov, 1905.
First Russian edition of George Berkeley’s...
£500
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BOETHIUS, Severinus; Richard GRAHAM, Viscount Preston, translator.
Of the Consolation of Philosophy. In five...
London, J. D. for Awnsham and John Churchill,...
First edition of this translation by the...
£950
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[BOLINGBROKE, Henry St John, Viscount].
Letters, on the Spirit of Patriotism: on...
London: Printed for A. Millar … 1749.
First authorised edition. Written in 1738...
£375
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[BOUDIER DE VILLEMERT, Pierre-Joseph.]
L’Andrometrie, ou examen philosophique...
Paris, chez Brunet, 1753.
First editions of two scarce works by the...
£2500
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BROUGHAM, Lord Henry.
Lives of men of letters and science who...
London, Charles Knight and Co., 1845-47.
First edition of the first volume (1845),...
£125
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BUQUOY, Georg Franz August de Longueval, Freiherr von Vaux, Graf von.
Anregungen für philosophisch-wissenschaftliche...
Leipzig, Breitkopf & Härtel, 1825.
First edition, rare, of a comprehensive...
£950
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CAMPANELLA, Tommaso.
La città del sole. Traduzione del latino.
Lugano, G. Ruggia, 1836.
Rare first Italian translation of Campanella’s...
£500
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CARAVADOSSI, Enrico.
La moderna filosofia convinta d’inganno...
Turin, Giammichele Brioio, 1793.
First and seemingly only edition of this...
£395
