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.

  1. [AQUHORTIES College.]

    Abstract of the Rules and Regulations for the Students in the College of Aquhorties …

    [At foot:] Edinburgh: Printed by J. Moir, Paterson’s Court. [1799?].

    Broadside rules for the newly established Aquhorties College, the only Roman Catholic college in Scotland, presumably designed to be posted up around the school.

    £850

  2. [AYALA Y AGUILAR, José de.]

    Examen del derecho de vida y muerte, egercido por los gobiernos. Escrito por un cubano.

    Barcelona, Estivill, 1838.

    First edition of a Cuban treatise of criminal law, a forceful impugnation of capital punishment which invokes arguments and schemes from, among others, Filangieri, Montesquieu, Beccaria, Rousseau, Bentham. The tract moves to a wider juridical consideration of the relationship between individuals and...

    £550

  3. BALLOU, Adin.

    Practical Christian socialism: a conversational exposition of the true system of human society; in three parts, viz:...

    Hopedale and New York, by the author and Fowlers and Wells, 1854.

    First edition. Adin Ballou (1803-90), Universalist clergyman and leading American Christian social reformer, founded the utopian Hopedale Community in 1841, during the heyday of such communal experiments. He surrendered his presidency of Hopedale in 1852 in order to devote himself to expanding his movement...

    £650

  4. BARRINGTON, George.

    A Voyage to Botany Bay with a Description of the Country, Manners, Customs, Religion, &c. of the Natives by...

    London, C. Lowndes for H.D. Symonds, [c. 1800-1802, A1 watermarked ‘1800’].

    First and only combined edition, second issue. George Barrington was a ‘genteel young Irishman known for his sartorial elegance, his command of the etiquette of romantic sensibility, and for his prowess at picking pockets’ (Garvey p. 2). The fascinating contrast between Barrington’s charming...

    £875

  5. BEARCROFT, Philip.

    An historical Account of Thomas Sutton Esq; and of his Foundation in Charter-House …

    London: Printed by E. Owen, and sold by F. Gyles … W. Hinchliffe … J. and P. Knapton … J. Stagg … and S. Birt … 1737.

    First edition. Thomas Sutton (1532-1611) was an Elizabethan civil servant who made an enormous fortune from leases of land rich in coal in Durham. In 1611 he bought Howard House for £13,000 from the Earl of Suffolk; the building acquired its more familiar name, ‘Charterhouse’, after the order of...

    £250

  6. [BEER.]

    Jenaischer allgemeiner Bier-Comment nebst angehängtem Bier-Prozess.

    ‘Eschwig, Otter & Kunitz, 183*.’

    An apparently unrecorded humorous handbook of drinking rules for students at the university of Jena, famous both as a centre of German idealism and Romanticism, and for its professors, who included Schiller, Fichte, Hegel, and Schlegel.

    £375

  7. [BOLZANO, Bernard].

    Bolzano’s Wissenschaftslehre und Religionswissenschaft in einer beurtheilenden Uebersicht.

    Sulzbach, J.E von Seidels, 1841.

    First edition of this critical summary of the greatest works of Bolzano, The Theory of Science and The Science of Religion, first published in four-volume sets in 1837 and 1834, copiously illustrated with citations from the original texts.

    £600

  8. BOOTH, Charles.

    In darkest England and the way out.

    London, Salvation Army, [1890.]

    First edition. ‘In 1890, the same year that Stanley published In Darkest Africa, Booth published In Darkest England. In this book he analysed the causes of pauperism and vice of the period, and proposed a remedy by ten expedients. These included land settlement, emigration, rescue work among prostitutes...

    £250

  9. BOSE, Johann Andreas.

    Introductio generalis in Notitiam Rerum publicarum Orbis Universi. Accedunt eiusdem Dissertationes de Statu...

    Jenae, J. Bielki, 1676.

    First edition of a pioneering work of statistics and rare Americanum, by the philosopher and historian Johann Andreas Bose (1624–1674). Bose’s crucial intuition as a student of human societies lies in his advocacy of interdisciplinary investigations. His work ‘on all the states in the world’...

    £3000

  10. BUCKNILL, Charles.

    Notes from medical lectures.

    London, February – April 1798.

    A most interesting medical manuscript by one Charles Bucknill recording lectures given in 1798 by the Scottish anatomist Matthew Baillie (1761–1823) and the English obstetrician John Clarke (1758–1815). Bucknill – likely a forebear of the psychiatrist and mental health reformer Sir John...

    £4500

  11. [CAMPOMANES, Pedro Rodriguez, Conde de].

    Discurso sobre el Fomento de la Industria popular. De orden de S. M. [Carlos III] y del...

    Madrid, D. Antonio de Sancha, 1774.

    First edition; preceding the complementary Discurso sobre la educación popular de los artesanos y su fomenta (1775); Dutch and Italian editions appeared in 1780 and 1787. Campomanes (1723–1802) was, according to McCulloch, ‘one of the most intelligent and distinguished Spanish statesmen of [the...

    £400

  12. CANTINE, Holley, and Dachine RAINER (editors), and Lowell NAEVE (illustrator). 

    Prison Etiquette:...

    Bearsville (NY), Retort Press, 1950. 

    First edition of this anthology of conscientious objectors incarcerated during the Second World War, ‘entirely hand-set, hand-bound, and printed on a footpedal press by the editors’ (jacket flap) in an edition of two thousand copies. 

    £275

  13. CAREY, Henry Charles.

    Principles of social science.

    Philadelphia, J. B. Lippincott, 1858-1860.

    First edition, a very attractive copy, of Carey’s principal work. ‘His treatment of social science was original, and led him to a series of supposed discoveries, the order of which he has stated in the introduction of his most important work The Principles of Social Science. His point of departure...

    £1200

  14. CLAVELL, John.

    A Recantation of an Ill Led Life: or, a Discoverie of the High-way Law. With ... many cautelous Admonitions and...

    London, Printed by A.M. for Richard Meighen ... 1634.

    Third and final edition, incorporating Clavell’s final revisions (it is 138 lines longer than the first edition of 1628), and a new preface by ‘his friend’ Richard Meighen.

    £3250

  15. [COAL].

    The miner’s journal. Coal statistical register, for 1869… also, statistics of the iron trade… rates of wages… together...

    Pottsville, PA, Miners’ Journal Office, 1869.

    First edition, rare. A synopsis of the trade, transportation and activities connected with coal between Pennsylvania and New York. The Miner’s Journal tracked the pulse of American coal trade, including importations of foreign coal and exports of domestic material. It prided itself on circulating ‘more...

    £250

  16. COMTE, Auguste.

    Cours de philosophie positive.

    Paris, Bachelier, 1830-1842.

    First edition, an attractive set, of Comte’s principal work, the outline of positivism. In the course of six volumes Comte sets out the terms of a new sociology and its status in relations to the other fields of knowledge. In fact it is in the forty-seventh lesson that the neologism ‘sociologie’...

    £1600

  17. COMTE, Auguste, and Albert CROMPTON (editor).

    Confessions and Testament of August Comte: and his correspondence with...

    Liverpool, Young, 1910.

    First edition in English of Comte’s Confessions, which first appeared with his ‘testament’ in French in 1884. These take the form of ‘Twelve Saint Clotildes’, a series of annual confessions which he recited to his muse’s grave. Clotilde de Vaux was a divorced woman whom Comte met...

    £80

  18. DANSON, John Towne.

    A Contribution towards an Investigation of the changes which have taken place in the condition of the people...

    London, M. & W. Collis, 1848.

    First edition, marked ‘for private circulation’, of a paper read before the Statistical Society on 21 February 1848.

    £50

  19. DARRÉ, G.-G.

    ‘Conferences diaconales données par Mr l’abbé Darré, Vicaire Général au GrandSéminaire d’Auch. Année...

    Auch, 1864.

    An attractively written manuscript of Abbé Darré’s practical manual for the use of young priests entering pastoral ministry, the text remaining unprinted, according to OCLC, until 1872.

    £200