Advanced search

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.

Sort by
Author
Price
Date
Title

  1. [ABC.]

    Petite géographie amusante abécédaire nouveau offrant pour chaque lettre de l’alphabet une carte coloriée avec l’explication...

    C. Lehuby, ‘Librairie de l’enfance et de la jeunesse’, [1851].

    A charming and very rare ABC intended to teach children European geography, from A for Allemagne to Z for Zara in Dalmatia, published just a few years after the upheavals of the revolutions of 1848.

    £3750

  2. [ABC.] 

    Alphabet mythologique. 

    [Paris,] lith. Durand, Ligny Jne. et Cie, [1840s?]. 

    A delightful and extremely rare ABC depicting figures from Greek and Roman mythology, alongside the Hindu river goddess Yamuna for the letter Y. 

    £2500

  3. ACTON, William.

    Prostitution, considered in its moral, social, & sanitary aspects, in London and other large cities. With proposals...

    London, [Savill and Edwards for] John Churchill, 1857.

    First edition of this medico-social analysis of sex work and sexually transmitted infections in London, in which physician William Acton argues for increased governmental intervention, influential in shaping the later Contagious Diseases Acts of 1864, 1866, and 1869.

    £1250

  4. [AQUHORTIES.]

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

    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

  5. [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

  6. [AYALA Y AGUILAR, José de.]

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

    Barcelona, Ignacio 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, and Bentham.

    £250

  7. BALFOUR, Arthur James, first Earl of Balfour.

    Letter, signed, to ‘Sir John’.

    London, 10 Downing Street, 28 June 1901.

    A letter from Arthur Balfour, as first lord of the Treasury, written a year before he was elected Prime Minister, concerning what would become perhaps his greatest achievement, the Education Act of 1902.

    £300

  8. 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...

    £450

  9. 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

  10. 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

  11. BEAUMONT, Gustave-Auguste de la Bonninière de.

    Autograph letter signed (‘Gustave de Beaumont’) to Sarah Austin.

    Birmingham, 27 June [1835].

    A warm and personal autograph documenting the relationship between Beaumont (1802–1866), prison reformer and travel companion to Alexis de Tocqueville, and one of the most accomplished contemporary catalysts of philosophical exchange, the translator Sarah Austin.

    £350

  12. [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

  13. [BENN, Anthony, father, and Charles Anthony BENN, son.]

    NICHOLS W., MAYLAND, GROOM, J., photographers. Photographic...

    Late 1850s–early 1900s.

    A charming collection of photographs and newspaper cuttings spanning some fifty years, compiled by a father and son during their Cambridge days, including a letter of thanks from Trinity Hall to the son, Charles Anthony Benn, for his endowment to the college, which now funds the Benn Bursary.

    £1200

  14. BOLAÑO, Roberto.

    2666.

    Barcelona, Editorial Anagrama, [2004].

    First edition of the Chilean writer’s last novel, the major preoccupation of the last five years of his life.

    £500

  15. [BOOKBINDER.]

    Sentence rendue en la chambre criminelle du Châtelet de Paris, qui condamne Guillaume Maillet, maître relieur,...

    Paris, Jean-Charles Desaint, 1782.

    Scarce pamphlet documenting the misdemeanours of the Parisian master bookbinder Guillaume Maillet.

    £575

  16. 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...

    £50

  17. BOSE, Johann Andreas.

    Io. Andr. Bosii introductio generalis in notitiam rerumpublicarum orbis universi. Accedunt eiusdem dissertationes...

    Jenae, Johann Bielke, 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’ marshalls...

    £1500

  18. BUXTON, Thomas Fowell.

    An Inquiry, whether Crime and Misery are produced or prevented, by our present System of Prison Discipline...

    London, [J. M’Creery] for John & Arthur Arch, J. Butterworth & Son, and John Hatchard, 1818.

    Third edition, published the same year as the first, of Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton’s influential Inquiry into the British prison system.

    £195

  19. [BUXTON, Thomas Fowell, Sir.] Charles BUXTON, editor.

    Memoirs of Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton, Baronet, with Selections...

    London, [Spottiswoode & Shaw for] John Murray, 1848.

    First edition of this memoir of Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton, edited by his son, and owned by Buxton’s cousin-in-law and contemporary in Parliament, Charles Barclay.

    £185

  20. [CAMBRIDGE.] 

    Tract volume of nine scarce works of poetry, including two installation odes on the occasion of HRH William Frederick...

    London and Cambridge, 1765-1823. 

    A sammelband of Cambridge poetry, including:

    £1200